THE MEAN IN
DREAMS
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THE MEANING OF DREAMS
MIND AND HEALTH SERIES
Edited by H. Addington Bruce, A.M.
THE
MEANING of DREAMS
BY
ISADOR H. CORIAT, M.D.
FIRST ASSISTANT VISITING PHYSICIAN FOR DISEASES OF
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM, BOSTON CITY HOSPITAL
INSTRUCTOR IN NEUROLOGY, TUFTS
COLLEGE MEDICAL SCHOOL
" Dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations;
'but great skill is required to sort and u/nderstand them."
— MONTAIGNB.
NON-REPERT
pqWYAD ♦ Q3S
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1915
/f // Cf
Copyright, 1915,
Bt Little, Brown, and CoMPAirr.
All rights reserved
PubHshed, May, 1915
ly 3 ufLfC
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Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co., Norwood, Mass. , U.S.A.
Presswork by S. J. Parkhill& Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
E. D. C.
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
IN accordance with the purpose of this
series to extend knowledge of the im-
portant discoveries affecting individual
and social welfare that have been made
during recent years through psychological
investigation, the present volume surveys
the principles and results of scientific dream-
analysis along the lines first formulated by
Doctor Sigmund Freud, of Vienna. Though
Freud's views are by no means those of all
medical psychologists, and have indeed
been vigorously criticized by not a few,
there is general agreement that he has
rendered a real service to both psychology
and medicine by his demonstration of the
practical value of dream-study. Certainly
no one has more thoroughly investigated
vu
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
the mechanism of dreams, and all future
explorers of this phase of the mental life
of man will owe much to his pioneering
efforts.
To be sure, it must also be said that most
medical psychologists at present beUeve
Freud has erred in attempting to reduce
all dreams to a single formula. Certainly,
however, his formula holds good in a sur-
prisingly large number of instances, as the
reader will discover. And, apart from the
question of its invariability, there can be
no denying the soundness of the funda-
mental principle on which all Freudian
dream-analysis rests — the principle, namely,
that every dream, no matter how trivial,
fantastic, or meaningless it may seem, has
a definite meaning, and a meaning that
sometimes is of great significance to the
dreamer.
Consequently a series like the present
one would be incomplete without a detailed
survey of dreams from the Freudian stand-
viii
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
point. For this task Doctor Coriat is well
qualified. Few American physicians are as
familiar as he with the doctrines and meth-
ods of Freud, or have applied them so con-
sistently in the treatment of nervous and
mental disease. He has had an extensive
clinical experience, having been for some
years connected with the Worcester State
Hospital for the Insane, and afterward with
the Boston City Hospital, with which he
still is associated. He is a member of many
scientific, medical, and learned societies in
America and Europe, is one of the editors
of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, and,
besides having written many technical pa-
pers on nervous and mental disorders, is
the author of a valuable textbook on " Ab-
normal Psychology." In that work, as in
this. Doctor Coriat draws on his own expe-
riences to illustrate and reinforce the more
important points in his exposition.
H. ADDINGTON BRUCE.
IX
PREFACE
THE new psychology of dreams, as
elaborated by Freud, represents
one of the greatest advances ever
made in our knowledge of the human mind
and of human motives. For abnormal psy-
chology, dream-analysis can be compared
only in importance with the discovery of
the origin of species and of the factors of
organic evolution in the field of biology.
The analysis of dreams is not only of great
theoretical value in the understanding of
the unconscious but has its practical side
as well, in giving medicine the most potent
instrument which it has ever possessed
in' the treatment of certain functional
nervous disturbances.
xi
PREFACE
.This volume is written along piu^ely psy-
cho-analytic lines, and every dream therein
has been personally analyzed by the author.
Its aim is to give the general reader an out-
line of the meaning of dreams as elaborated
by the psycho -analytic school, with its ap-
plications to medical science, in particular
to that method of psychotherapy known as
psycho-analysis. Because of the great dif-
ficulties inherent in the subject of dream-
analysis, only the basic principles have been
given, the details being left for the special
treatises and journals on the subject.
ISADOR H. CORIAT.
Boston, February, 1915.
xa
CONTENTS
OHAFTEB PAOB
Editorial Introduction . . . vii-ix
Preface xi-xii
I. The Problem of Dreams ... 1
II. An Example of Dream-Analysis . 13
III. Dreams as the Fulfillment of
Wishes 43
IV. Dreams and the Unconscious . . 57
V. The Mechanism of Dreams . . 66
1. THE CONTENT OF DREAMS
2. CONDENSATION OF DREAMS
3. DISPLACEMENT IN DREAMS
4. ELABORATION OF DREAMS
5. DREAMS WITHIN DREAMS
6. SYMBOLISM OF DREAMS
7. THE CENSOR AND PSYCHICAL RE-
PRESSION
VI. The Function of Dreams . . 96
VII. Dreams of Children and of Primi-
tive Races 106
xiii
CONTENTS
OHAPTEE PAOB
VIII. Typical Dreams ..... 121
IX. Prophetic Dreams .... 141
X. Artieicial Dreams .... 153
XI. Dreams and Nervous Diseases . 164
Index 193
XIV
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
Chapter I
The Problem of Dreams
EVERYBODY dreams, and every
dream means something, no mat-
ter how fragmentary and ridicu-
lous it may appear. It may be symbohc
of something deep-seated in the personal-
ity of the dreamer, or it may indicate
something trivial, but in every case, the
dream has a meaning, which can only be
discovered through an analysis of the dream
itself. It is the purpose of this book to
describe such analysis of dreams in simple
language.
The various psychological theories of
dreams have ascribed their origin to physi-
1
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
cal and organic stimuli which pour into the
brain during sleep. In the light of modern
investigations in the field of psycho-analysis,
this view-point has been proven to be too
superficial, because such an interpretation
does not explain, for instance, how an un-
covered foot may at one time give rise to
a dream of freezing to death amid Arctic
snows, and on another occasion, in the
same individual, lead to a dream of being
bound hand and foot before a gigantic
electric fan as a form of martyrdom for
some religious belief. The central prob-
lem of dream psychology, therefore, must
answer the question as to why the dreamer
interprets the physical or organic stimulus
as he does, and why the same stimulus
often gives rise to widely different types
of dreams.
The theory of dream formation as elabo-
rated by Freud does indeed admit that
external stimuli may often enter into the
complex machinery of the dream, but only
2
THE PROBLEM :0F DREAMS
as an instigator or starter of the dream, in
much the same manner as the self-starter
of an automobile, which throws all the
cylinders of the motor into action. The
real makers of the dream, however, accord-
ing to psycho-analysis, are certain uncon-
scious mental processes. The psycho-
analytic view-point goes a step further and
shows in addition how the unconscious and
ofttimes latent mental process may be
transformed into a most complex dream
by means of certain well-known dream
mechanisms. Therefore, any stimulus, —
physical, organic, or ideational, — is merely
the instigator or activator of important
mental processes in the formation of the
dream. We must emphasize the term
"important", since no dream ever deals
with trifles, but only with subjects of great
personal interest to the dreamer.
Because the dream undergoes such an
elaborate transforming process, it must
conceal within itself not only the uncon-
3
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
scious thoughts which actually give rise
to it, but also all the stimuli, physical or
mental, which have thrown these mental
mechanisms into activity. Therefore, the
dream must be deciphered or analyzed in
order to be understood. The deciphering
of a dream is one of the functions of psy-
cho-analysis, which, in its broadest sense,
may be defined as that method which,
without the use of hypnosis, investigates
human motives and the content of the
unconscious.
Such an analysis demonstrates that while
on the surface the dream may appear to be
a weird, absurd, and disconnected phan-
tasmagoria, yet the unconscious thoughts
which give rise to it are arranged in a logical
order and have a definite purpose in the
protection of the mental well-being of the
dreamer. The dream, therefore, is a sym-
bol of certain mental processes, and as
will be demonstrated later, it represents
the fulfillment of a wish which for years
4
THE PROBLEM OF DREAMS »
may have lain dormant in the unconscious.^
This is why the dream is so important a
factor for a proper understanding of human
personahty, normal and abnormal, and for
a proper interpretation of human character.
The dream has likewise a genetic meaning
and can be used to interpret the uncon-
scious desires of both the race and society.
A man's motives and character cannot
be judged by his conduct or his speech,
because his conduct may conceal his inner
feelings, or the conventionalities of modern
civilization may have taught him to sup-
press and thus rationalize his real emotions
and desires. In the true interpretation of
man, the psycho-analysis of dreams comes
to our rescue. Dreams are not the dis-
ordered phantasmagoria of a partially sleep-
ing brain, but are logical and well ordered,
and conceal within themselves our true
1 The term "unconscious" is used in this book, not in the popu-
lar sense of loss of consciousness, but as meaning mental processes
of which we are not aware, but of which we may become aware in
dreams or through certain technical devices.
5
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
wishes and desires. The dream reveals
the true inner man, his various motives
and desires, hidden from the view of others
and often hidden from his own conscious
thoughts. Consequently, when rightly in-
terpreted, dreams are the real key to the
riddle of human life, because through them
the door is unlocked to our unconscious and
our real selves. The unconscious is our
true self, not our conscious thinking, with
its rationalization of all our mental pro-
cesses.
The dream may also use popular and even
strange phrases in its symbolism, reminding
one strongly of punning and witticisms.
In fact, Freud's theory of wit is based upon
the same mental mechanism as that of
dreaming. For instance, a woman had
the following dream. She seemed to see
a fair-haired child, resembling the Cupid
which appears on Valentines and with a
pink scarf about the body, sitting on an
elephant and driving it. The analysis of
6
THE PROBLEM OF DREAMS
this apparently absurd dream was most
interesting. Two types of instigators of
the dream could be determined : a physical
one, some pictures of recently acquired
elephants at a Zoological Garden; and a
mental one, a desire to buy Valentines for
some children. In this woman there was
a strong wish for motherhood, which for
certain reasons was difficult of fulfillment.
She felt that if she had a child at her period
of life it might be a great burden to her.
Therefore, the unconscious deliberately
picked out the elephant as an instigator,
because it served its purpose as a pun, —
namely that a child might be "an elephant
on her hands."
Thus "the interpretation of dreams is,
in fact, the via regia to the interpretation
of the unconscious, the surest ground of
psycho-analysis, and a field in which every
worker must win his convictions and gain
his education" (Freud). Dream interpre-
tation, even in a practical, so-called
7
THE MEANING OF DREAMS^
materialistic state of society, is not a form
of interesting and idle scientific play, but
a practical method of the utmost impor-
tance, since it gives us an insight into the
inner nature of man, into his real motives
and desires, into his unconscious mental
life.
From the period of the earliest Baby-
lonian records up to modern times, a belief
in the interpretation and the veracity of
dreams, particularly in foretelling the
future, was possessed by the mass of people.
The popular point of view has always been
that a dream is a symbol and has something
of importance concealed within it, and this
hidden meaning, often cryptic, can be in-
terpreted. For years psychologists have
held the opinion that the dream was a
senseless grouping of ideas which ran ram-
pant in the brain of the sleeper, claiming
indeed that the sleeping brain was incapa-
ble of any form of logical thinking. There-
fore, dreams became mere curiosities, not
8
THE PROBLEM OF DREAMS
worthy of study by any intelligent individ-
ual. On the one hand we were confronted
by the superstitious and the prophetic
value ascribed to dreams which existed
for centuries and on the other by the psy-
chological skeptic.
The year 1900 is one of great significance
for psychology in general and for the psy-
chology of dreams in particular. In that
year, the Viennese neurologist, Doctor Sig-
mund Freud, first published his ''^ Traum-
deutung'' ("Interpretation of Dreams")? a
work of profound erudition and represent-
ing years of study and close observation.
This work opened a new vista in the inter-
pretation of dreams and of the unconscious
mental life, and so epoch-making was it
that it made all previous attempts in this
direction seem almost absolutely worthless.
In it Freud showed for the first time that
the dream was of great importance psy-
chologically and was really the first link
in the chain of normal and abnormal
9
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
psychic structures. For the first time, too,
there was opened a certain road to the
explanation of unconscious mental pro-
cesses, processes which are admitted to-
day to contain the greater portion of human
personality. As a result of these investi-
gations the dream became divested of the
triviality ascribed to it by the academic
psychologist and the superstition which so
long had held the masses of people and
been portrayed in the popular dream-book.
Dream mythology had become a genuine
dream psychology ; the dream was no longer
the "child of an idle brain, begot of nothing
but vain fantasy." The dream had be-
come of practical importance, on the one
hand to the psychologist in interpreting
unconscious mental processes, and on the
other to the physician, in giving him for
the first time a method for the clear under-
standing of such abnormal mental states
as phobias, obsessions, delusions, and hal-
lucinations. The dream had become the
10
THE PROBLEM OF DREAMS
real interpreter of normal human life and
of abnormal mental mechanisms, and
through the elaboration of the psycho-
analytic method which was made possible
through this new dream psychology, the
dream had also become the most potent
instrument for the removal of the symp-
toms of certain functional nervous dis-
turbances.
Thus the '' Traumdeutung" has come
to occupy the same central and important
place for abnormal psychology as the
"Origin of Species" did for biology.
Through the researches of the active
workers in the field of psycho-analysis,
certain modifications have crept in and are
continuing to creep in, the same as in the
later work of De Vries and Mendel for
evolution and the origin of species, with-
out, however, in either case changing the
fundamental principles as set forth by the
original discoverer.
The technique of dream-interpretation is
11
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
most difficult. A dream of an instant may
require dozens of pages for its proper inter-
pretation, thus showing how condensed a
product the dream is. Without training
in neurology and psychiatry, and without
an accurate knowledge of Freud's theories,
one cannot hope to succeed in dream-
analysis, which is the basis of the psycho-
analytic treatment of the neuroses, any
more than one can do a complicated
chemical analysis without training in the
elements of chemistry.
12
Chapter II
An Example of Dream- Analysis
IT is best to take as a starting point
in explaining dream-analysis the in-
terpretation of an ordinary dream,
thus paving the way for a clearer under-
standing of the psychology of dreams and
the various mental mechanisms which en-
ter into their formation. To interpret or
analyze a dream means to find out its inner
and often hidden meaning, to collect the
thoughts or mental processes which have
produced the dream and out of which the
dream is constructed.
Only a portion of the analytic procedure
can be described, and since dream-analysis
is an art as well as a science, a considerable
knowledge of psychopathology is needed
as well as long experience in dream-inter-
13
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
pretation. In fact, the analysis of dreams
is a highly technical procedure, and like
other technical methods, must be fully
learned and mastered before it can be
adequately handled as an instrument to
penetrate the deepest and most significant
aspects of our thoughts. No amount of
reading can make a psycho-analyst any
more than one can expect to paint por-
traits by reading how to do it.
For certain reasons I shall choose the
following dream of a medical friend, which
was dreamed in the late morning and
written down immediately on awakening,
thus making its recollection exceedingly
accurate, as it was particularly vivid and
intense. This dream I was given the oppor-
tunity to analyse fully. It will be noticed
that while the dream is short, the analysis
occupies many pages. This is a fact of
great significance which will be subse-
quently explained in detail. As in all
dream-analysis, there were opened up
14
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
certain data of exceedingly intimate re-
lationship, which led into places where
discretion was needed. Thus for personal
reasons, these mental processes cannot be
mentioned, while other data which it may
be necessary to disclose will be more or
less disguised. These omissions do not,
however, in any way invalidate the pur-
pose of the analysis which we wish to em-
phasize : namely, a study of the various
dream mechanisms.
THE DREAM
My friend seemed to be in the dining-
room at the home of Doctor and Mrs. X.
From the room the entrance-hall could be
seen. Mrs. X. was there and looked per-
fectly natural, while Doctor X. appeared
to be sitting on the edge of a leather-covered
chair. Doctor X. appeared changed, how-
ever. In place of a short moustache, it
seemed that he had grown a beard resem-
bling the beard of the dreamer ; he appeared
15
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
rather thinner than usual, while his hair
was silky and of light tow color. The
three appeared to be talking earnestly and
intimately about some subject which the
dreamer was unable to remember. In the
midst of the conversation, the front door-
bell rang. Doctor X. went to the door,
and as he was leaving the room, Mrs. X.
remarked: "That is a rabbi; we don't
want any more rabbis in here."
Then she dived suddenly under the table
as if to hide, crouching low in a most un-
dignified manner, entirely out of keeping
with her usual dignified behavior, and
motioned to the dreamer to hide in a closet.
Doctor X. came back and with a smile
said: "It wasn't a rabbi; it was a
package." Then all resumed easy conver-
sation. Doctor X. then remarked that he
was not going to Europe this year on
account of the war and added: "Have
you read Wells's 'The World Set Free' .^"
My friend replied that he had read it
16
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
shortly after publication and added that
it was remarkable how Wells had so
clearly predicted in the book many of the
events of the present European war. Then
Doctor X. replied : ''Yes and the Holland
dikes or dams — and they are going to
erect a monument to the Prince of Lum-
bago."
Now what does this nonsensical, appar-
ently meaningless dream signify, and how
did this conglomeration of ideas come into
the dreamer's head ? What was the mental
process that produced the change in the
personal appearance of an intimate friend,
and made a dignified young woman act
and talk in such a curious manner ? What
was the meaning of the ridiculous phrase
"the Prince of Lumbago .^" What was be-
hind the dreamer's thought that prompted
him to put the remark about rabbis in
the mouth of the young woman ? At this
point a brief preliminary statement, even
17
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
at the risk of later repetition, becomes
necessary.
The success of a psycho-analysis of a
dream depends upon the subject whose
dream is analyzed. He must tell every-
thing that comes into the mind concerning
each element of the dream and not sup-
press or brush aside an idea because it
appears unimportant or of no significance.
No association that arises is too trivial
for the analysis; everything is essential.
In other words, the attitude of the sub-
ject towards his dream must be purely
objective; he must, in cold blood, as it
were, dissect the dream into its component
parts. This is best done in a quiet, rest-
ful position and with the concentrated
attention on each dream-element. This is
merely a brief outhne of the procedure of
dream-analysis. The finer technical points
and the interpretation of the symbolism of
dreams, for reasons of space and because
of the special difficulties involved, cannot
18
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
be discussed here. It is important, how-
ever, to point out that dreams make abun-
dant use of symboHsms to disguise the
latent thoughts producing the dream, and
these symbols have the same general
meaning in all dreams because they belong
to the unconscious thinking of the human
race.
Toward this procedure there will arise
the natural criticism that then a dream
can be made to say almost anything; it
can be twisted and distorted at random.
This, however, is not so, for the free asso-
ciations employed in dream-analysis are
really not free. They are no more due to
chance than the falling of a stone is due to
chance. In the physical world both speed
and direction of falling objects are brought
about by the inexorable law of gravitation.
So in the mental world, ideas apparently
chosen at random are subject to a definite
law. The thoughts do not come haphazard.
The free associations brought forth in the
19
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
analysis of a given element of a dream are
produced by the same mass of unconscious
thoughts as create the particular dream-
element under examination.
When one thinks voluntarily of a number,
for instance, we find on analysis that the
number which occurs is not a voluntary
product, but determined by thoughts of
which the subject is not aware, i.e. un-
conscious thoughts. Thus the number,
like the apparently free association, is
motivated by unconscious thoughts. An
example of this apparently random or
"chance" choosing of numbers occurred
in the following dream : A woman dreamed
that she was counting nickels used for
telephoning and found that she had nine,
counting them in three's, as, three — six —
nine. How is this all to be explained?
Were the numbers in the dream of acci-
dental occurrence, chance figures, an arbi-
trary choice, or were they caused by ideas
unknown to the consciousness of the
20
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
dreamer? An analysis of this dream re-
vealed the concealed mental feelings of
the woman and demonstrated that re-
pressed memories, pushed out by conscious-
ness because painful, revealed themselves
in these apparently chance numbers. Thus
she had been married twelve years (nine
plus three equals twelve, the end numbers
of the counting process) and at the end of
nine years certain domestic difficulties with
her husband entered into her life, rendering
her very unhappy. This difficulty occurred
three years ago. Furthermore, she won-
dered if her husband would give her the
annual birthday gift, as her birthday was
approaching on the twenty-seventh day of
the month (nine times three equals twenty-
seven) in which the dream occurred.
In a like manner, if attention be f ocussed
on any particular element of a dream, and
everything that comes into the mind be
related without criticism, it will be found
that the incoming thoughts brought to
21
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
the surface are directly or indirectly re-
lated to the specific dream-element. There
is no free choice in the ideas which appear ;
there is a rigorous relation of one idea to
another. This relationship is called deter-
minism.
On this theory of determinism the psy-
cho-analytic procedure is based. Further-
more, there is a remarkable similarity in
the dream-interpretation of the dreams of
different individuals. In fact, certain so-
called "typical dreams" in various in-
dividuals, — which nearly every one has
dreamed, — such as the dream of being
clothed in insufficient clothing, or the dream
of the death of a near and dear relative,
can all be traced to the same unconscious
thoughts. This could only take place if
there were a psychical connection between
the apparently random thoughts. The
collateral thoughts, too, in dreams of the
same type, lead to the same inevitable
conclusion. Furthermore, in the similar
22
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
technical method of the association tests/
the reply given to a certain test word is
only superficially at random. There exists
here, as in the free association procedures
of dream-analysis, a deep connection be-
tween the test word and the reply. Our
conscious motives and our conscious
thoughts, whether these latter occur during
our waking life or in dreams, are motivated
or caused by the unconscious.
Of course every dream cannot be fully
interpreted, because the resistance which
produced the distortion of the dream may
likewise be at work in the analysis. One
form of resistance is the unwillingness of the
subject to give free associations, as in the
frequent remark: '' I can't think of anything
else." In discussing the psychology of
dream activities, Freud states as follows:^
"It is in fact demonstrably incorrect to
^ For an account of the association tests see my "Abnormal
Psychology " chapters iii and iv, 2nd edition New York, 1914.
2 "The Interpretation of Dreams," p. 418. (In this and sub-
sequent passages from Freud, Brill's translation is used.)
23
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
state that we abandon ourselves to an
aimless course of thought when, as in the
interpretation of dreams, we relinquish our
reflection and allow the unwished-for idea
to come to the surface. It can be shown
that we can reject only those end-presenta-
tions that are familiar to us, and that as
soon as these stop, the unknown, or as we
may say more precisely, the unconscious
end-presentations immediately come into
play, which now determine the course of the
unwished-for presentations. A mode of
thinking without end-idea can surely not be
brought about through any influence we can
exert in our mental life; nor do I know, either,
of any state of psychic derangement in which
such mode of thought establishes itself."
With these prehminary statements, which
are absolutely essential to a clear under-
standing of dream-analysis, we will now
proceed to the analysis of the dream itself.^
1 The dream-elements, as they appear in the analysis, are
given in italics.
24
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
THE ANALYSIS
Doctor X. was an old school and college
friend of the subject and on taking his
degree had specialized in surgery, while the
subject had specialized in internal medi-
cine. The subject had known Mrs. X. only
since her marriage, and when he first met
her, not only he but others had remarked
on her Semitic appearance. Doctor and
Mrs. X. had both planned to go to Europe
that year, but on account of the outbreak
of the European war, the trip would prob-
ably have to be postponed, although the
subject had not heard definitel}^ from them
for some time, as he had left town for a
summer holiday. The subject also, in the
earlier part of the year, had thought of
making a European trip, but had post-
poned it and had remained in America at
the urgent request of his family.
Dining-room at the home of Doctor and
Mrs, X,
25
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
The subject did not care much for the
summer resort for the reason that while
the food was abundant, he found the cook-
ing rather tasteless. He had frequently,
while there, expressed the wish to return
to the city, and had often, partly in jest
and partly in earnest, said that he would
like to be in town before the supply of
foreign foods, of which he was fond, had
been exhausted. Doctor and Mrs. X. had
often given delightful dinners at their home,
and at these dinners many excellent dishes
were served. Therefore, this portion of
the dream becomes clear. It expresses the
fulfillment of a desire to be in the city again
with its excitement, rather than endure the
dull routine of the country; and also the
wish to have again a dinner at the home of
Doctor X. in place of the tasteless food of
the summer resort. Dining-room also sym-
bolized intimacy, since less intimate friends
would be received in a drawing-room.
Doctor, X. appeared changed. In place
26
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
oj a dark moustache, it seemed that he had
grown a heard resembling the heard of the
dreamer.
The subject in the dream had given
Doctor X. one of his own physical charac-
teristics, namely, a beard. He had often
thought and impressed it upon Doctor X.,
and indeed the latter had himself remarked
that he wished he had had a better training
in internal medicine, as this would be of
material help to him in surgical diagnosis.
In the dream, one of the attributes of the
internist, namely the beard, is given to
Doctor X., the part in this, as in many
dreams, standing for the whole. Thus the
wish for his friend to have increased knowl-
edge of internal medicine is fulfilled in
this part of the dream. He is given part
of the subject's mental equipment — in
the guise of a physical characteristic.
He appeared rather thinner than usual.
Doctor X. had grown rather corpulent
within the last few years, and had vol-
27
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
untarily, within the last year, materially
reduced his weight through diet and
exercise. The dreamer thought that this
change was for the better, as he had often
felt that his friend was too stout for his
health.
His hair was silky and of a light tow color.
The day before the dream, the subject
had visited a boy's camp situated in a high,
mountainous district, and, as a physician,
he was impressed with the splendid physical
condition of all the boys there. He saw
several boys with light, tow-colored hair,
the same color as Doctor X.'s hair in the
dream, the color of hair being that usually
seen on dolls. Doctor X. had not been
well of late ; in fact, for a time he was rather
nervous and sleepless. He thought that he
could improve his health by reducing in
weight and going to a gymnasium. In
the dream he is given one of the attributes
of a successful return to health, the physical
attribute which characterized some of the
28
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
healthy boys, namely, tow-colored hair.
Again we see the fulfillment of a wish and
the part of a dream standing for the whole.
The recent experiences of the day before,
which have been woven into the dream, are
termed dream instigators. Thus, although
the instigator was at first sight of insignifi-
cant importance, it became a part of the
dream, because the experience was one of
psychical significance for the dream itself.
In other words, the "tow-colored hair"
was selected from a mass of recent experi-
ences because it fitted exactly into the
principal function of the dream, namely :
its wish fulfillment that the doctor be in
better physical condition. Thus the re-
cent memories as well as older memories
are treated the same way in the dream,
because both served the wish-fulfilling pur-
pose of the dream.
The putting of light hair on the head of
a man whose hair is dark, and of a beard,
when in reality no beard exists, is caused by
29
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
two important dream mechanisms called dis-
placement and condensation. These mech-
anisms have a definite purpose in unravel-
ling the meaning of the dream. The
displacement gives the individual the at-
tribute of a wished-for physical strength
(symbolized by the light hair) and of a
better knowledge of internal medicine
(symbolized by the beard). These two
attributes are condensed in the one individ-
ual, the figure of the doctor. This con-
densation is produced in the dream by a
fusion of traits belonging to two different
individuals, thus making them more prom-
inent and thereby reinforcing two divergent
but friendly wishes. A certain similarity
is therefore expressed in the underlying
thoughts (termed the latent content) which
gave rise to the dream, and these were
fused for the purpose of reinforcement
in the dream as related (called the manifest
content). The ability to see the entrance
of the dining-room, the closet, and the
30
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
leather chair, all of which objects and situa-
tions do not exist in reality, are also in-
stances of displacement for the purpose of
expressing the wish, as will be shown later,
of an intimate friendly relation : i.e. —
the house is topsy-turvy, and yet they
receive outsiders; who can these outsiders
be but relatives or intimate friends ? Thus
''Dream displacement and dream conden-
sation are the two craftsmen to whom we
may chiefly attribute the moulding of the
dream."
The three appeared to be talking earnestly
and intimately,
A wish to retain friendship, so that this
easy and intimate conversation might be
continued, with the good times incident
on friendship and a sense of feeling
thoroughly at home in another's house.
The subject had left town without saying
good-by and while away had not even
written a postal to his friends. He won-
dered if this would in any way minimize or
31
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
jeopardize his friendship and hoped that
it would not. Therefore this, as well as
other parts of the dream, represents this
wish as fulfilled and still present.
Mrs, X. remarked: " That is a rabbi: we
donH want any more rabbis in here.
Rabbi. The subject had often thought
that Mrs. X. looked foreign and Jewish,
but she was really not a Jewess. The
subject himself was Hebrew and had often
felt, because of his religious belief, that
perhaps he was only tolerated by the
doctor and his wife, and that, after all,
the friendship was probably not so intimate
as the subject wished. Therefore the sig-
nificance of the phrase "We don't want
any more rabbis in here" signified that
the friendship would remain the same,
but they did not care to have any more
Jewish friends. Again the fulfillment of
a wish. He felt that he had really re-
mained an intimate friend, so much so that
in his presence and without hurting his
32
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
feelings they could refer to the desire not
to have any more Jewish friends. This
was symbolized and condensed in the
reiteration of the word "rabbis." This
portion of the dream also shows, through
a kind of reinforcement, that Mrs. X. is
not Jewish, as she would not speak thus
disparagingly of her co-religionists.
It is of interest also that Mrs. X. looked
perfectly natural in the dream; there was
no disguise, but a kind of effort to preserve
her Semitic appearance in order to offset
and neutralize in the dream her reference
to Jews (rabbis) . This is due to the action
of what is known as the censor, which divests
the dream process of part of its cutting
references to Jews by preserving the Jewish
appearance of the person who made the
remark. Thus the long underlying dream
thoughts have undergone a censorship, a
little late perhaps, because the dream was
pretty fully formed, so that the reference
to rabbis crept in but was immediately
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
neutralized. A compromise has been
formed to disarm the remark of its force.
This censorship acts in the same way as
that apphed to dispatches or telegrams of
war correspondents before being given to
the public, neutralizing the message so as
to make it as harmless as possible. So
the censor often works in dreams to render
certain groups of dream elements harmless.
Rabbis also gave the free associations
rabble or crowd, meaning that they did not
care for any more friends, but just a few
intimate friends like the dreamer, even
though they were Jewish. Yet they feel
so at home with him that they can conven-
iently refer to other Jews.
Then she dived suddenly under the table
as if to hide, crouching low in a most undig-
nified manner, entirely out of keeping with
her usual demeanor, and motioned to the
subject to hide in a closet.
This undignified behavior of the doctor's
wife again expresses the fulfillment of the
34
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
wish that in their house he be made to feel
completely at home, so that in his presence
she could act as she wished, even going to
the absurd extreme of squatting under the
table and talking freely.
Wells's " World Set Freer
This followed the doctor's remark that
his projected European trip had been given
up on account of the war. The subject
had often remarked the prophecies of Wells
in his scientific romances, particularly con-
cerning war, as in "The War in the Air"
and "The World Set Free." There had
recently appeared in the newspapers an
account of the havoc wrought in Antwerp
through bombardment by a German Zep-
pelin, and how nearly Wells had forecast
these fights of the "nations' airy navies"
in his books. In the accounts of the war,
the subject had constantly compared the
actual events with Wells's latest book.
Then Doctor X, replied: ''Yes and the
Holland dikes or dams — and they are going
35
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
to erect a monument to the Prince of Lum-
bago."
A reference to the threat of the Dutch
that if their neutral country were invaded
by the Germans the same as Belgium was
invaded, they would open the dikes and
flood the country. The fulfilling of this
threat forms one of the most dramatic
episodes of Wells's recent book.
Lumbago. The subject had lumbago for
several days previously, and since he had
not improved under anti-rheumatic diet,
he at one time had thought of going to the
city for electrical treatment. In fact, he
thought that this would furnish a good
excuse for returning to the city. That
the word lumbago is a form of displacement
or dream contamination^ is shown through
the free associations, viz. : Lumbago —
^ As a literary example, the following passage from Carroll's
"Alice in Wonderland," which is really the dream of a child,
offers a specific instance of dream displacement : "Alice turned to
the Mock Turtle, and said : ' What else had you to learn ? '
*Well, there was Mystery,' the Mock Turtle repUed, 'Mystery,
ancient and modem, with Seaography, then Drawling.' "
36
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
Lemburg — Limburg (a place mentioned
in the war dispatches) — Limburger —
cheese — wondered if through the war the
supply of foreign cheese, of which he
was fond, would be curtailed. This also
brought to his mind a jocular remark made
in the past that the flavor of some cheeses
was so fine that the inventor of them ought
to have a monument erected to him. Thus
the displaced word lumbago, by means of the
free associations, is likewise connected with
the phrase Holland dikes or dams : Holland
— Dutch — Dutch cheese — Edam cheese
— dams — (limburger cheese) — all of which
are condensations for foreign food stuffs,
really a wish for change from the plain and
rather tasteless diet of the summer resort.
The meaning of the dream thus becomes
clear, and the question "What put that
into my head V is answered. In analyzing
this dream, we find that it is composed of
the condensed product of two factors, viz. :
(1) The dream antecedents or instigators,
87
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
such as the events of the previous days,
and (2) A complex mass of latent, uncon-
scious thoughts. Out of these two factors
the dream was woven.
The dream-analysis consists therefore
of collecting each dream-element in an
orderly way by means of free associations
of the thoughts which come into conscious-
ness without exercising any conscious or
voluntary control. Thus while the dream
itself might appear absurd, disconnected,
and meaningless, the dream thoughts (or
latent content of the dream) were a logical
arrangement of the subject's complicated
and intimate mental life. The dream
(manifest content) was short, the analysis
was long and intricate. Therefore the
dream was not only a condensed product of
a mass of latent thoughts but was likewise
allegorical and symbolical.
The motive of the dream as shown
throughout the entire analysis is the ful-
fillment of a wish or rather a group of
38
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
wishes which were concealed within this
apparently absurd dream. All dream-
analysis is for the purpose of deciphering
these cryptic and hidden wishes. Thus
the dream becomes not only the most
potent instrument for the analysis of the
unconscious and conscious mental life, but
also of certain morbid fears and obsessions,
all of which have the same mechanism and
wish-fulfilling purpose as dreaming.
The translating of the dream thoughts
from the latent content into another form
in the manifest content shows that the
sleeping brain is capable of logical thinking,
and that the most complex mental activity
may take place during sleep. The chang-
ing from latent to manifest content is
termed the work of the dream. Thus the
dream work is not mechanical and physio-
logical, but a complex psychical process.
The dream is also a condensed product of
a long and complicated psychic process.
Not only has the dream become condensed
39
[THE MEANING OF DREAMS
but likewise disguised for the purpose of
protecting sleep from the vast mass of
thoughts which produced the dream, and
which, if dreamed literally, might disturb
or even awaken the sleeper. These va-
rious dream mechanisms will be more fully
discussed in the course of another chapter.
In the analytic procedure, it will be noticed
that each element of the dream is taken
separately for analysis, and the final com-
bination of these elements, in other words
the synthesis of the dream, leads finally
to the wish fulfillment concealed within
the dream. The true meaning of the dream
is therefore reconstructed out of the dis-
connected fragments and becomes a logical
whole, in much the same way as discon-
nected pieces of colored glass can be com-
bined to form the allegorical figures of a
stained glass window.
The deciphering of the latent dream
thoughts from the dream as remembered
is the analysis. This analysis is an expan-
40
AN EXAMPLE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS
sion and therefore the reversal of the dream
work, which is really a compression or a con-
densation. The large mass of latent dream
thoughts have not only been condensed, but
likewise displaced, dramatized, and elabo-
rated, thus rendering the true meaning of
the dream unrecognizable without analy-
sis. Because the dream is so condensed,
because the manifest content represents a
rich well of underlying dream thoughts, the
dream is said to be over-determined.
Thus the dream becomes perfectly in-
telligible only when regarded from the
standpoint of a wish fulfillment. If the
dream represents a wish fulfilled, if the
fulfilling of wishes is the only function of
dreaming, how is it done.^ The dream
wish has emanated from the unconscious,
and the dream thus becomes a direct road
for a knowledge of the unconscious mental
life. There must be something then in
the unconscious which subserves and
directs this function of wishing, and since
41
THE MEANING :0F DREAMS
all dreams are concealed wishes, the only
function and activity of the unconscious
mental life must be desiring or wishing.
As Freud states:^ "The reason why the
dream is in every case a wish realization
is because it is a product of the unconscious,
which knows no other aim in its activity
but the fulfillment of wishes, and which
has no other force at its disposal but wish
feehngs." As will be shown later, there
are other types of wish fulfillment besides
dreams; for instance, all psycho-neurotic
symptoms are disguised wish fulfillments
from the unconscious. Thus the dream
does not say what it really means ; the real
meaning can be found only by the employ-
ment of that difficult technical method
known as psycho-analysis.
In a few words, the real meaning of the
dream analyzed above is that it represented
the fulfillment of a wish to preserve friend-
ship.
1 "The Interpretation of Dreams," p. 448.
42
Chapter III
Dreams as the Fulfillment of Wishes
I HE dream stands in the center of
the psycho-analytic theory and
gives us the best insight into
normal and abnormal mental structures.
Dream-analysis furnishes the physician the
most direct means of understanding various
abnormal mental or nervous states, such as
obsessions, fixed ideas, delusions, hysteria,
etc., and is the most powerful instrument
which he possesses for the removal of such
pathological symptoms. The unconscious
contains our repressed instincts, our erotic
or sexual phantasies, and it expresses these
as symbolic wish fulfillments in dreams
or in psycho-neurotic symptoms.
The motive power for every dream is
furnished by the unconscious, although
43
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
this motive power may be set into activity
by our conscious thoughts, pre-sleeping
reveries, or physical instigators during sleep.
A conscious wish in children or in adults
may reinforce the unconscious wish, and it
will be fulfilled in the dream. As Freud
so well expresses it: "Experience teaches
us that the road leading from the forecon-
scious to the conscious is closed to the dream
thoughts during the day by the resistance
of the censor." ^
At the bottom of every dream there lies
a repressed wish in the unconscious, a
wish which may appear disguised in the
dream, and which can only be interpreted
by an analysis of the dream. The theory
that every dream represents the fulfillment
of a repressed wish is one of the most im-
portant contributions of the psycho-ana-
lytic school but it can be well substantiated
by practical experience in dream-analysis.
Furthermore, as previously pointed out,
1 "The Interpretation of Dreams," p. 429.
44
DREAMS AS WISHES
the unconscious has no other force or func-
tion at its disposal but wish feehngs and
their fulfilhnent. Of course, except in the
very elementary wish dreams of children,
the wish in adult dreams is hidden within
the dream thoughts or latent content of
the dream, and only in rare instances does
it appear in the dream itself.
As an example of such a concealed wish,
we may take the dream of a woman who
dreamed that one of her brothers was about
to be put to death by hanging. Such a
dream appears to contradict totally the
theory that dreams represent wish fulfill-
ments, often the fulfillment of wishes im-
possible in reality, for one would at once
say that no woman would be so heartless,
so devoid of feeling as to entertain such a
wish against her brother. If the dream
is interpreted literally, such a criticism
would be well taken, but the remembered
dream (manifest content), as previously
pointed out, is merely a disguise of the
45
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
underlying unconscious thoughts which pro-
duced the dream. What, then, are these
thoughts? Why does this woman's un-
conscious self wish her brother to be hanged,
when her conscious thoughts, nay, even
her whole moral being, would revolt from
such an idea ?
The analysis fully disclosed the reason
for such a dream. It developed that the
brother who was seen in the dream was a
fusion or composite picture of two of her
brothers, one of whom had died eight years
previously of tuberculosis, and the other
four years ago of cancer. After the death
of the first brother, the dreamer had for
some time been troubled with a cough, and
although assured that her difficulty was not
tubercular, she had never been able to
dispel fully the idea of tubercular infec-
tion, particularly since she possessed a
certain fear that the disease was hereditary.
The dream itself occurred shortly after an
operation for a small, non-malignant tumor,
46
DREAMS AS WISHES
which had been growing for a number of
years, and which she had feared might be
of a mahgnant character. This fear was
also somewhat exaggerated and fortified
owing to the fact that her other brother
had died of cancer, and she had become
more or less obsessed by the idea that per-
haps cancer, like tuberculosis, might be
hereditary. In a way, this fear of a can-
cerous or tubercular heredity had worried
her for a long period. With these data
in mind, the meaning of the dream becomes
clear. Its wish as disclosed is not the
desire to have her brothers hanged, but a
longing that she be free from any physical
disease with the slightest hereditary taint,
for the purpose of calming her anxieties
and her almost obsessive attitude towards
heredity. Therefore, the dream means
that she wished her brothers had died of
some disease other than cancer or tuber-
culosis (as these diseases might be hered-
itary, and she might also fall a victim to
47
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
one of them) ; in fact, even hanging would
be preferable, so far as her peace of mind
was concerned.
The term ''wish" in psycho-analysis is
very comprehensive and connotes in a broad
sense all our desires, ambitions, or strivings,
which are fulfilled in our dreams, if not in
reality or in reveries, principally because
such wishes or desires are strongly repressed
from personal, social, religious, or ethical
motives. Children have no such motives,
therefore the wishes of the child's waking
life and its dreams at night are identical.
The latent content of every dream is the
imaginary fulfillment of an ungratified or re-
pressed wish, but a wish cannot produce a
dream, unless such a wish harmonizes with
the whole or a portion of the unconscious self.
Thus a mental conflict frequently arises,
the repressed, unconscious wish constantly
striving to enter consciousness, which it
can accomplish only in a dream. Dreams
and nervous symptoms have frequently the
48
DREAMS AS WISHES
same construction and mechanism; both
represent conflicts between wishes, i.e. :
the wish to forget and the wish for ful-
filhnent.
The source of the dream wish may lie
not only in the thoughts repressed into the
unconscious, but likewise in actual desires
arising during the night, such as thirst.
For instance, if a feeling of thirst arises
during sleep, we may dream of gratifying
this thirst through drinking. Since the
thirst is gratified in the dream, the wish
for a drink is fulfilled, and sleep remains
undisturbed. Therefore, this, as many
other dreams, serve to protect sleep; the
wish has incited a dream in which the wish
is fulfilled, instead of awaking the sleeper
for the fulfillment of the wish in reality.
Now, a wish or conflict between wishes
may not only cause an hysterical disturb-
ance but likewise may show itself in the
dreams of the individual who suffers from
hysteria. For instance, a young woman
49
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
who had an anxiety hysteria, with feeUngs
of perplexity and indecision concerning
certain emotional attributes which she be-
lieved she lacked, had a dream in which
she saw herself in a disguised form and
apparently made up of the figures of three
women friends. On analysis it could be
shown that this fused or composite figure
of herself represented certain desired attri-
butes, and the three women had these
very attributes for which she longed.
Therefore, the fusion of these three figures
into a new person representing herself
and yet not herself was a fulfillment of her
own wishes; and furthermore, the women
were not accidentally chosen, but deliber-
ately selected to harmonize with these
wishes. Thus no dream element, figure,
or situation is accidental ; it is the prod-
uct of our repressed, unconscious wishes,
of which the dream represents the logical
fulfillment. In other words, every dream
element is predetermined or motivated by
50
DEC 11 19S3
DREAMS AS WISHES
our unconscious mental life. The fusion
of the three figures into the new personal-
ity in this dream was a prearranged plan
of the subject's unconscious, which took
this method of fulfilling certain wishes
which could not be gratified in reality.
Examples of this wish-fulfilling function
in the simple dreams of adults are as
follows : ^
Dream. A woman and her sister were
seated in a restaurant, and at the table
was also a man, not clearly recognized
in the dream. The woman glanced at the
clock and said: "I am glad Mr. X. is not
here now; it will be ten minutes or more
before he arrives."
Analysis. A few weeks previous to
this, Mr. X. who was a business acquaint-
ance, had persuaded the dreamer to pur-
chase some artistic objects which she did not
care about, but bought merely for the pur-
* The wish dreams of children will be discussed in the special
chapter devoted to that subject.
51
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
pose, she thinks, of pleasing him and the
art dealer. She resented this action on his
part, and although still pleasant to Mr. X.
outwardly, yet she gets ''square" with him
in the dream by not having him at the
dinner-party. Thus in the dream the
wished -for revenge is fulfilled.
A young woman who had started to
study aesthetic dancing and had purchased
a pair of new ballet slippers for that pur-
pose had the following dream after having
had one dancing lesson. She dreamed
that she was walking in the street with her
ballet slippers, and that these were worn
almost threadbare. The analysis showed
that she had compared her new slippers
with those of the more advanced members
of her class, who were making rapid prog-
ress, and who knew more than she did
about sesthetic dancing. The instigator
of the dream seemed to be a remark made
by a woman in the class, who pointed to
her worn-out slippers and said: "These
52
DREAMS AS WISHES
are my second pair this season." Thus the
dream fulfilled her wish that she might
be further advanced in dancing, a wish
symbolized by the threadbare slippers.
A young man on a short visit to a
congenial household dreamed that the re-
cently planted bulbs in this household had
sprouted and bore flowers. The wish in
this dream is perfectly clear: it expresses
the desire to prolong the visit, and this is
expressed by the length of time it takes
bulbs to grow.
These few samples of pure wish dreams in
adults must suffice for the present. Others
of a more complex character are given in the
course of this book, but when these compli-
cated dreams are analyzed, they will be
found to contain a hidden wish, as for in-
stance, the apparently senseless dream of
the dining-room, given as an example of
dream-analysis in the second chapter.
The following dream is of interest, as it
contains both an adult and a childhood
53
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
wish. It occurred in a normal individual
free from psychoneurotic disturbances :
Dream. L. (the dreamer's daughter) and
I were bathing with others at dusk near a
wooded slope. Suddenly some one said :
''Isn't it too bad; a boy and girl (or a
mother and daughter) have been drowned
(or killed)." I expressed my sorrow, came
out of the water, and began to hail L.
through the darkness: "L. where are
you ! I want my clothes ! " As I mounted
the hill, a large, handsome woman passed
by. She looked sad. I appeared to be
only partially dressed, having only my
trousers on, but did not feel in the slightest
degree embarrassed. I asked the woman
what the matter was, and she replied that
she had lost some one dear to her. Then
she disappeared. It was day, and I ap-
peared to be alone on another landscape,
looking at myself borne up the hill, on a
litter, apparently dead. Just as if I were
some one else, I cried out to my daughter :
54
DREAMS AS T\1SHES
"L! L! what's the matter!" She did
not answer. I reiterated my question more
anxiously, and then L. smiled. I lifted
myself from the litter and began to laugh.
Analysis. The obvious instigators of
this dream were the accounts of the Euro-
pean war (wounded soldiers carried on
litters) and the fact the subject was at a
mountain resort, where there was bathing
in a mountain pool. An interesting point
of great significance in the dream is the
doubling of the principal character; in
other words, the dreamer appears twice
in the dream, once alive and once dead.
This doubling process thus reinforces the
wish concealed within the dream : namely,
that the dreamer be alive and younger so
that he may accomplish more work. This
doubling process is an important mechan-
ism, the same as the twin-motive so often
found in mythology, or when a legend is
related twice, like the two Babylonian and
Hebrew accounts of creation. Both these
55
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
are for the purpose of emphasizing anew
and thus reinforcing the original legend;
or in the dream, for the purpose of rein-
forcing the primary wish like a dream
within a dream. That portion of the dream
in which the dreamer found himself only
partially clothed represents a reversion to
childhood days. Its significance will be
taken up in detail later on when we analyze
a typical dream of nakedness.
56
Chapter IV
Dreams and the Unconscious
BEFORE the various dream mechan-
isms are discussed in detail, it will
be necessary to give a brief outline
of the psycho-analytic conception of the
unconscious mental life, as this enters so
largely into the formation of dreams. The
term "unconscious" does not connote, as
in the popular sense, lack of consciousness,
but signifies mental processes of which one
is not aware, and cannot spontaneously
be brought to consciousness, but which
may artificially be recalled by means of
the special technique of psycho-analysis;
or which arise spontaneously in dreams,
psychoneurotic symptoms, or the various
symptomatic actions of e very-day life.
The unconscious contains nothing that has
not been learned, thought, or experienced.
57
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
Unconscious mental processes are not mere
physiological nerve activities but are psy-
chically active and dynamic; in fact, they
have all attributes of normal thinking but
lack the sense of awareness. These pro-
cesses remain unconscious, because they
are prevented from reaching consciousness
through a force termed resistance. This
resistance, which it is impossible at this
point to describe in detail, is of great im-
portance in the analysis of dreams and in
the psycho-analytic treatment of func-
tional nervous disturbances. Only thoughts
which are emotionally painful or disagree-
able, and which we have repressed either
in adult or childhood life, tend to remain
in the unconscious.
Thus unconscious thoughts may be re-
pressed not only in the acts and thinking
of every-day adult life, but also in our
childhood, the latter forming what is known
as the infantile unconscious. This infan-
tile unconscious is pf great psychological
58
DREAMS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS
and practical importance, because in it
the thoughts are so deeply buried by the
resistances imposed through our mental
and moral development that it becomes
very difficult of access. It is, however,
clearly revealed in certain typical dreams,
such as the dream of the death of one of
our parents or the dream of being dressed
in insufficient clothing. Such dreams re-
veal our infantile unconscious and there-
fore our childhood wishes, although the
exact memory for these wishes apparently
may have vanished long since. It is such
wishes from the infantile unconscious, that
also reveal themselves in many nervous
symptoms of adult life, such as fears, obses-
sions, and hysterical symptoms. In fact,
upon analysis nearly all dreams will be
found to contain some elements from the
infantile unconscious or highly tinged by it.
The latent (unconscious) thoughts which
motivate a dream are furthermore compli-
cated by our conscious thoughts and also
59
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
by daily instigators or physical discomforts
arising during sleep. However cleverly or
completely we may decipher or analyze
these, if the unconscious thoughts are not
reached and laid bare, we can never fathom
the real meaning of the dream, because it
is the unconscious which makes the dream,
although the unconscious may be thrown
into activity by conscious thoughts or
organic stimuli. Since the only function
of the unconscious is wishing or desiring,
the dream as a wish fulfillment can never
be completely understood until we have
these unconscious thoughts in our posses-
sion. Dreams are therefore the royal road,
in fact, the easiest road, to a knowledge of
our unconscious mental life.
Thus the unconscious contains not only
recent experiences, but likewise impressions
of infantile or childhood life, all of which
are actively and dynamically functioning
like conscious processes. The unconscious
is therefore the great repository of our men-
60
DREAMS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS
tal life ; in it are contained thoughts and
wishes which may be foreign to our per-
sonaKty, to our moral or ethical nature,
thoughts which we constantly and appar-
ently successfully repress, but which inad-
vertently and to our surprise suddenly crop
out as symptomatic actions, psychoneurotic
symptoms, or dreams. All functional ner-
vous disturbances, dreams, and slips of
the pen or tongue are motivated by uncon-
scious mental processes, of which they are
the symbolic expression. The unconscious
is a kind of limbo of seemingly forgotten
groups of thoughts or complexes, which
are constantly striving to reach conscious-
ness and are just as persistently rejected
by the repressive action of the censor.
But frequently the censor nods and is
caught unawares, the repressed wish slips
through in the form of a dream, and we are
repeatedly surprised to discover how primi-
tive, how selfish and savage, may be our
unconscious desires. Accordingly dreams
61
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
reveal, either in a literal or symbolized form,
our unconscious, which is our true mental
life, and not our outward activities, which
are changed by the conventionalities of
society. As a heritage of our long ances-
tral line from primitive man, there remains
in all of us something of the barbarian
and savage, which has become repressed
and veneered by the refinements of culture
and civilization. It is in the unconscious,
where we have repressed it, that we find
the traces of our savage ancestry. The
unconscious is barbaric and primitive in
its elements and likewise unethical, because
ethical interpretations of motives occur
only in states of advanced civilization.
Thus the unconscious contains not only
our adult and infantile characteristics, but
the emotions of the childhood of the human
race as well. As I have previously ex-
pressed it,^ the value of the analytic method
^ Isador H. Coriat, "A Contribution to the Psychopathology
of Hysteria," Journal Abnormal Psychology, vol. IV, no. 1, 1911.
62
DREAMS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS
lies in the fact that through it one is able
to discover repressed material and thus
establish a definite psychological connec-
tion between symptoms and repressed ex-
periences. The entire psychical complex
may be constructed through the data
furnished by psycho-analysis. All the
heterogeneous material consequently falls
into certain law and order. It is here
that the great value of Freud's work lies :
in demonstrating that mind is a dynamic
phenomenon, and that its manifestations
follow definite laws of cause and effect, as
in the physical world. The unconscious
thus becomes a symbol, a working hypoth-
esis, in the same manner that certain math-
ematical signs are symbols, or the physical
conception of an all-pervading ether.
Thus the existence of the unconscious
is the result of a repression, and the uncon-
scious consists wholly of repressed material.
For instance, certain ethical or moral
standards may conflict with the individual's
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
personality and it is exactly these stand-
ards which undergo the process of repres-
sion. Such standards are of the nature of
wishes which are constantly striving for
real gratification in every-day life, or in
psychoneurotic symptoms and for imagi-
nary gratification in dreams. The fact
that these standards are repressed is the
most convincing proof of their existence.
The so-called New England conscience is
one of the best examples of repression.
This repression of emotions at the same
time' admits their reality by trying to
avoid and negate them. The effort of
these repressed emotions to find an outlet
leads to all forms of nervous invalidism
such as so-called nervous prostration and
various types of morbid fears. Such indi-
viduals externally appear cold and austere,
apparently emotionless, and lacking all
essentials of human feeling, yet their dreams
show various degrees of forbidden desires
which only in this manner come to expres-
64
DREAMS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS
sion. Conditions like these teach us that
we are all emotional volcanoes, and when
we pride ourselves on having subdued our
emotions and on not yielding to so-called
vulgar feelings and temptations, neverthe-
less it is certain that, hidden within the
depths of our unconscious, these repressed
desires are as potent and active as though
they assailed every second of our conscious
thinking.
65
Chapter V
The Mechanism of Dreams
AFTER having analyzed the dream
given in the second chapter and
shown how an apparently mean-
ingless jumble can be reduced to law and
order, we are now prepared to discuss the
various dream mechanisms of which hints
have already been given. In a psycho-
analysis we find that the dream thoughts
have undergone a series of different dis-
tortions, to disguise the dream for the
purpose of protecting the sleeper. These
different distortions by means of which
the manifest dream-content is formed from
the underlying dream thoughts, are known
as dream mechanisms,
A dream-analysis, as shown in the pre-
vious chapter, gives us a method of pene-
tration and a deep insight into the uncon-
m
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
scious mental life. The dream work is a
kind of shorthand, a chemical formula, by
means of which the dream material is
compressed or condensed. The formation
of the dream from the latent dream thoughts
is due to several mechanisms, each of which
will be discussed in turn. These mechan-
isms are condensation, displacement, drama-
tization, secondary elaboration, and rein-
forcement,
1. The Content of Dreams. The con-
tent of dreams consists of many complicated
ideas, and there is a constant tendency in
the minds of the uninitiated to confuse the
matter of the dream itself and the thoughts
out of which the dream is woven. It has
already been amply demonstrated that the
dream is not an isolated, chance phe-
nomenon which takes place during sleep;
but behind it, hidden in the same way that
the movements of marionettes are hidden,
lies the motive power of the unconscious.
It is this motive power which distorts the
67
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
dream, makes it unrecognizable, and hides
the wish. Now what is it that hes behind
the dream; what is the material out of
which the dream is woven? When this
is once deciphered, what relation do these
hidden thoughts bear to the dream itself?
The unconscious thoughts which are
hidden from the dreamer and make the
dream are termed the latent content. This
latent content can only be revealed
through a psycho-analysis. The dream
itself is the result of a long and complicated
unconscious mental process, which com-
presses, displaces, and disguises the latent
content. This changed latent content is
the dream as it is remembered on awaken-
ing, and to this remembered dream the
term manifest content is applied. The
manifest content is produced directly
by the dream thoughts. These dream
thoughts, for the specific purpose of ful-
filling the wish of the dream, may undergo
all sorts of new combinations and arrange-
68
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
ments. The manifest dream is a conscious
process, but the dream itself is made in the
unconscious and enters as a finished prod-
uct into consciousness.
2. Condensation of Dreams. In the
process of condensation, the manifest content
of the dream represents a number of dream
thoughts or instigators, because the dream
material is compressed or condensed. It is
for this reason, when a particular dream
or dream element is analyzed, we find
that the dream material (both unconscious
thoughts and instigators) is far more exten-
sive and of more intricate construction than
the dream itself. Thus the purpose of con-
densation, which is really a kind of fusion,
is to express similarity or identity between
several elements of the dream thoughts,
and from this it follows that the special
dream thoughts which enter into the con-
densation become disguised by this con-
densing process. Furthermore, this com-
pression also protects the sleeper from
69
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
being awakened by the multiplicity of
dream thoughts and instigators which
pour into consciousness. Thus the dream
thoughts, by being condensed, create some-
thing new, because the dream elements
represent a series of dream thoughts.
The dream is a highly visualized product
like the cinematograph, and like it too,
it is constantly in motion. Just as, behind
the limited area of the motion picture as
projected on the screen, there may be many
feet of film, of which the moving picture
as seen is merely the condensed product,
so the dream picture is the condensed prod-
uct of a long series of dream thoughts
which lie behind it. Each dream element
is therefore over-determined by a multi-
plicity of dream thoughts ; that is : one
dream thought represents a whole series
of dream elements. This is well seen in
the following fragmentary dream : He
seemed to be walking in the street with a
girl whom he did not recognize.
70
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
This dream is very short and condensed
(over-determined), but note how complex
when analyzed. The face of the girl in
the dream was a condensation of several
male and female friends, viz. :
A. A girl with whom he is in love.
B. A recent female acquaintance.
C. One of his boy pupils in the school
where he taught.
D. A portrait of an actress.
Thus these multiple dream elements,
A — B — C — D, have been condensed into
one face as follows :
Figure I. — Diagram Illustrating the Process of Conden-
sation IN A Dream
71
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
The unconscious has probably no con-
ception of time, because repressed experi-
ences and wishes of the past and present
may be fused and condensed into a single
dream picture.
3. Displacement in Dreams. The
most important element of the dream may
stand in the foreground and yet possess
the least value of all the dream elements;
and conversely, an apparently trivial ele-
ment may represent the most vital and im-
portant part of the dream. This process
is termed displacement, and it is this
mechanism which more than all others
explains the bizarre character of dreams.
Thus the dream thoughts and also the
emotional quality of the dream become
transposed. Sometimes displacement is
for the definite purpose of expressing a
concealed wish, whose real meaning can
be ascertained only through analysis. For
instance, a young woman dreamed that
she was in a strange room, and two pretty
72
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
blond children, whom she did not recognize,
referred to her as "Bella," whereas her real
name was "Delia." An analysis of this
dream gave the following free associations :
Bella — beautiful — Bella Donna — beau-
tiful woman." Therefore this dream dis-
placement of the letter "B" for "D",
changing Delia to Bella, expressed the usual
feminine wish to be prettier than she really
was.
The construction of the manifest content
out of the multiple dream thoughts is due
to the process of what is termed the work
of the dream or the dream making. Be-
cause most dreams are visual pictures, the
action may become very complex and in
constant movement, resembling a cinemato-
graph. This mechanism is termed drama-
tization,
4. Elaboration of Dreams. This
usually arises from the more conscious
mental processes. In other words, the
dream is disposed of as a dream, it is criti-
73
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
cized by the sleeper as diflferent from
reality, because of the thought which so
often arises: "Why, it is only a dream!"
This thought either reinforces the primary
wish of the dream or neutralizes it and thus
offsets its primary motive. In dreams of
horror, this secondary elaboration, as a con-
cession to the sleeper, may be a protective
mechanism. For instance, a nightmare
may take place, and instead of awaken-
ing the sleeper, it may be recognized as only
a dream, and the sleep go on undisturbed.
Thus it is but a step from this to the
mechanism of reinforcement, in which the
prominent or primary wish of the dream is
reinforced, expressed anew for the purpose
of emphasis by means of a second dream
following the first, really a dream within
a dream.
5. Dreams within Dreams. This
brings us to the interesting subject of
dreams within dreams, which is really a
variation of secondary elaboration, a type
74
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
of the mechanism of reinforcement for the
purpose of emphasizing the dream wish
or expressing it anew. In a way, a dream
within a dream is a mirror picture seen
in a mirror. Sometimes it takes the form
of the reahzation that the process is only
a dream; on other and more rare occa-
sions, the dream may be a self-interpreted
one.
As an example of the former process, a
young man dreamed that he received a
telegram announcing, to his profound shock
and surprise, that his mother was dead.
In the dream, he jotted this fact down,
saying to himself that he was told by his
physician to keep a record of his dreams.
The second portion of the dream, in which
he realized that the first part was merely
a dream to be recorded and analyzed, is a
type of a negative wish : in other words,
the censor has informed him that he merely
dreamed the receipt of the telegram, and
the news was not true at all. Thus the
75
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
first part of the dream is neutralized and
rendered invalid by the second portion.
On other occasions, the second part of
the dream appears under the guise or form
of an actual analysis of the first part of the
dream, and in the few instances in which
this process has been encountered by me,
the analysis used in the dream was the
very analysis which the subject desired to
be made of the dream. In other words,
the analysis reinforced the wish concealed
within the first part of the dream.
An example is the following : ^
Dream. The dreamer appeared to be
in a cemetery. Many open caskets were
visible, and in these caskets were moulder-
ing bodies. Then the scene seemed to
shift to my office, and he related the dream
to me in all its details. After he had
finished, I laughed and remarked that such
a dream was not difficult to analyze and
1 Only the outlines of this extremely interesting and complex
dream are given, as the details would lead into psychological dis-
cussions beyond the scope of this book.
76
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
then analyzed the entire dream, according
to the technical methods used in dream
analysis.
Under these conditions the question
arises : is the self -analysis in the dream a
true analysis, such as would be made by
the physician, or a wished-for analysis of
the dreamer from his own conscious
thoughts and projected on to the personal-
ity of the physician? It developed that
the latter was the true interpretation;
that is : the analysis in the dream was the
analysis desired and not the interpretation
that would be given under analysis in the
waking condition. In other words, the
unconscious wishes of the subject were
reinforced by the second portion of the
dream in which the analysis appeared.
Another pretty example of a dream within
a dream is the following one of a young
woman :
Dream. It appeared that she had sent
a letter of congratulation to a woman,
77
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
whose son's betrothal had been recently
announced. Then she felt that the letter
had been incorrectly addressed and that it
would never reach her. At this point she
became conscious of the fact that she was
only dreaming.
Analysis. At one time in the past a
love affair had developed between the
subject and the friend who figured in the
dream. She had not seen him for a year
or two, as business affairs had compelled him
to reside in another city, and yet during all
this time the feeling of affection remained.
On the day of the dream, she had read in
the newspaper of his betrothal, much to
her painful surprise and disappointment.
A congratulation was what would have
naturally followed, as she felt that in the
event of his betrothal, she had become
persona non grata with him. In the dream,
such a letter of congratulation was written,
but the wrong address placed on the
envelope, this being a symptomatic action
78
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
to express her disapproval of the whole
affair and therefore an unconscious desire
to withhold rather than offer her congrat-
ulations. The wrong address had thus
betrayed and laid bare her true feelings.
The idea that it was "only a dream"
showed that she was still hoping against
hope, that she was jealous of the other
woman and fortified the wish that the news
of the betrothal was merely a dream and
not the reality. Thus the feeling that she
was only dreaming robs the dream of its
reality ; it expresses a wish that what has
occurred in the dream should not have
actually occurred.
6. Symbolism of Dreams. Dreams fre-
quently contain disguised erotic wishes
and many phallic symbols. This is partic-
ularly true of many so-called typical
dreams/ such as the dream of nakedness, of
the death of a parent, or of dental irritation.
^ These will be fully discussed in Chapter VIII and hence need
only be briefly referred to here.
79
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
I am not referring here to the frank sexual
dreams which nearly every one has expe-
rienced, but to the more highly disguised
and symbolized type of dreams briefly
referred to above. The erotic desire may
be something retained from the infantile
or childhood life and derived not at all
from adult life or recent experiences. It
is the repressed infantile desire which often
appears in the dream, not literally, but, as
in the conventionalities imposed by civih-
zation and culture, disguised by indirect
means, often by mere allusions. These
are the sexual symbols of dreamers, many
of them quite complex and often incom-
prehensible until we trace their sources
to other channels. These symbols are the
same in all dreams, because they are uni-
versal, the result of collective thinking and
can only be interpreted like a hieroglyph or
a cuneiform inscription.
The dream may use as material to express
its symbolism certain recent mechanical
80
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
inventions, as in the following "flying
dream": The subject dreamed that he
was on the edge of a beautiful valley, in an
aeroplane, flying from place to place, with
a strong sense of pleasure. He felt de-
lighted to go and come as he pleased in
the dream. This dream is a variant of
the typical flying or floating dreams which
recur so frequently as to be grouped
among the typical dreams. These typical
dreams will be discussed in a subsequent
chapter. It needs only to be pointed out
here that in the above case the aeroplane
was used as material to express the under-
lying symbolism of such a flying dream,
which in its essence meant a wish to be free
from all social restraint, to do as one
pleased.
7. The Censor and Psychical Re-
pression. The conservation of ideas and
memories in the unconscious and their
later appearance in a dream is seen in the
following interesting number dream:
81
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
The subject was shown a white sheet of
paper, and on it were two rows of figures
as in statistical tables, viz. :
331 133
331 133
331 133
She said in the dream to some one : "Which
is it — 133 or 331?"
On awakening from the dream, she could
not recall what the numbers signified.
Analysis. A couple of days previously,
the subject became interested in calculat-
ing machines with their rows of numbers.
This acted as the dream instigator. A
young woman friend had been recently
married, and she was planning to send her
a wedding present. The number of the
street on which the bride lived had been
told her on two occasions, but she was in
an abstract, inattentive condition when in-
formed. Later on, while attempting to
recall the number, she could not, try as
she would. She had selected a pretty
82
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
Japanese picture for the present, but after
selecting it, she felt that she really wanted
the picture for herself, as it was rather
rare, and she was therefore not especially
desirous of sending the present to the bride.
Thus this disturbing complex acted in such
a way as to prevent the conserved but
unconscious number from reaching con-
sciousness. The number was really there,
but on account of the disturbing complex
it could not be recalled, and yet consciously
she strongly wished to remember the num-
ber. On awakening from the dream, it
was impossible to tell what the numbers
signified or connect them with the wedding
present, thus demonstrating that the dis-
turbing complex was at work both when
asleep and awake. Then again she asked
the same person: "Where does she live.f^"
and the reply came: "I told you twice
yesterday, but you were not paying much
attention to me ; it was Thirty-three Blank
Street."
83
/ THE MEANING OF DREAMS
It will be noticed now that the number
of the street was disguised in the dream by
being placed in two rows of three (a symbol-
ization of the real number) and by having
one placed before and after the real number.
This disguise was for the deliberate yet
unconscious purpose of preventing the sub-
ject from recalling the number, even in a
dream, because the subject did not really
wish to give the present selected, but
wanted to keep the special gift for herself
on account of its uniqueness. This caused a
resistance in reproducing the number both
while asleep and awake, although the
number was actually registered and con-
served. Now what made this resistance;
what was its ultimate purpose; and what
was gained by it ? How was the instigator
or the source of the dream material (in
this case the calculating machines) able to
set into activity the unconscious wish to
remember the number, and why was it
not* definitely remembered ? Why was it
84
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
disguised? The answer to these questions
opens up the discussion of a very important
factor in all dreams, termed the censor or
the censorship of consciousness and the
theory of psychical repression.
The entire subject of psychical repression
is one of great importance, not only in
dreams and in the development of psycho-
neurotic symptoms, but likewise in every-
day life, as a defence of the mind to neu-
tralize our unwelcome and unpleasant
thoughts. In analyzing a dream, for in-
stance, groups of thoughts will suddenly
crop out which surprise us, thoughts which
carry with themselves an unpleasant emo-
tion and seem foreign to our personality.
When we arrive at these thoughts, we at-
tempt to push them back, because they are
out of harmony with our conscious feelings,
but once they have fully obtruded into
consciousness, they tend to remain there.
These are the repressed thoughts which in
the past we have pushed into the uncon-
85
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
scious, and are wishes and desires whose na-
ture is such that they act as intruders to the
normal course of thinking or are unaccept-
able to our moral or ethical standards ;
hence the constant attempt to conceal
them and to push them out of the conscious
into the unconscious. This process of re-
pression is not always voluntary, but may
be an involuntary act as well, in order to
protect the mind from ideas and feelings
which are unpleasant and painful.
When thoughts have been made uncon-
scious through repression, a certain force
or resistance must be overcome before
such unconscious thoughts can again be-
come conscious. This resistance is a de-
fensive action of the mind and the distortion,
disguise, fusion, or symbolic expression
which take place in a dream is due to the
force exerted by this resistance, which is
termed the censor. The feeling that per-
haps we have dreamed a great deal more
than we remember is probably based upon
86
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
a vague memory of the latent thoughts
of the dream, which have been prevented
from fully reaching consciousness through
the force exerted by this censor.
Since the purpose of the censor is to pre-
vent certain registered memories from be-
coming conscious, it follows that in the
number dream analyzed this censor was at
work as a kind of unconscious resistance.
There was a constant repression of the real
number into the unconscious, because for
selfish motives the subject did not actually
care to remember the number. In every way
the numbers thirty -three were disguised, first
by placing another figure before and after
each number, and secondly by grouping
the numbers. It will be noticed, however,
that the other figures, when added, formed
each a group of threes, giving rise to the
number thirty-three, and secondly, the
grouping of the figures themselves was in
threes, again giving the number thirty-
three. In the dream the disguise was so
87
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
successful, due to the repression, that the
subject failed to penetrate this disguise or
in any way to guess at the symbolism of the
numbers. Thus this dream becomes a
wish fulfilled; the censor has triumphed;
the wish to forget the number has been
successful.
But sometimes the censor is weak; cer-
tain latent dream thoughts or emotions
succeed in escaping its vigilance, and the
dream may then be accompanied by dis-
tressing emotions, giving rise to the so-
called nightmares or anxiety dreams. The
subject then will suddenly awaken with a
sense of terror and anxiety, the mental
state having the usually physiological ac-
companiments of cold sweating and rapid
heart-beat. The dreams of suffocation, of
being nailed down in a coffin and struggling
to get out, are instances in question. In
other cases, just as the subject is falling
asleep, he will awaken each time with a
momentary vivid dream of being pursued,
88
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
of choking, inability to breathe, etc. Of
course these types of dreams are continual
disturbers of sleep and lead to insomnia,
because the unconscious, repressed emo-
tions are continually escaping the censor,
without disguise or fusion, and so lead to
a state of constant morbid anxiety in the
mind of the sleeper. A marked example
from a case of anxiety hysteria is the fol-
lowing dramatic dream.
Dream. It seemed as though a man who
was angry with the dreamer had thrown
her into a large tank of water and held her
head under the water until she drowned.
During all this time, he was laughing and
jesting and seemed to enjoy her struggles
in her endeavor to save herself and escape
from the tank. There was a constant,
horrible, suffocating feeling as though she
were bound down. It appeared as though
she were upright in the water, and the man
held his hand over her head, forcing it to
remain beneath the surface of the water,
89
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
so that she could not breathe. She kept
one arm elevated above the surface of the
water, and the man kept pressing her head
downward until her arm dropped limp.
There was an intense sensation of drowning,
an unpleasant suffocation and struggling
with great fear, breathlessness, eyes shut,
fighting, finally absolute inability to
breathe. Then she saw herself dead and
floating beneath the surface of the water
and awoke in terror.
Analysis. This is a typical anxiety
dream due to the same repressed emotions
which caused the subject's hysteria, and
an analysis of such dreams, of which the
subject had many, finally led to an un-
covering of these repressed emotions.
During the day, the repressed emotions in
trying to escape produced the hysterical
symptoms ; and during the night, similar
repressions led to the anxiety dreams.
Of course, such a dream is full of other
symbols which it is unnecessary to relate
90
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
here. The instigators of the dream which
set the unconscious anxiety into activity,
but which in themselves could not produce
such a dream unless the unconscious anxiety
were present, were two, namely :
(1) Several nights previously the sub-
ject had seen a dramatic representation of
the Arabian Nights, in one scene of which
a man was thrown into a tank and his head
held under the water until he was drowned,
the hand of the drowning man meanwhile
holding on to the edge of the tank until the
grasp slowly relaxed.
(2) A few days previously she had read
Maupassant's "Le Horla," in which an
attack of nocturnal anxiety (nightmare) is
vividly described.
It was these two instigators which entered
into the intense and vivid dramatization
of the dream, and which set the unconscious
machinery of the dream, in the form of
repressed feelings, into motion. The dream
was not a literal repetition of the instiga-
91
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
tors, but there was a rearranged emotional
process. The latent content of the dream
was the repressed emotions; the manifest
content was a dramatization of the dream
instigators. The night terrors of children,
while they may be instigated by digestive
disturbances, are due to the same mechan-
ism of a psychical repression of certain
emotions into the unconscious, attempting
to find an escape. This was clearly seen
in some analyses of hysteria in children.^
Sometimes a wish repressed into the un-
conscious may cause dreams in which
symptomatic acts occur — such as in the
previously analyzed dream of placing the
wrong address on an envelope — in much the
same way as in every-day life. Superfi-
cially such acts seem to be done accidentally
or by chance, but an analysis of such acts
shows that they represent the expression
of a concealed and repressed wish, — in
^ Isador H. Coriat, "Some Hysterical Mechanisms in Chil-
dren," Journal Abnormal Psychology, 1914, vol. IX, nos. 2-3.
92
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
other words they are motivated by desires
of which the person is unaware. A young
woman for instance had the following
dream :
Dream. She seemed to be walking in
the street with her sister and was idly
playing with a ring on her finger, moving
it thoughtlessly back and forth, apparently
"just to keep my hands busy." Finally
she came to a pile of shavings, and the
ring accidentally fell in this pile, so that she
could not find it.
Analysis. This dream represented a
wish of the subject. She actually possessed
such a ring, which she had not really lost.
This ring was a graduation gift, and en-
graved on the inside was the date of her
graduation from college. She had often
feared that if this date were known to
others, it would betray her age, which, for
family reasons and because she contem-
plated marriage, she was anxious to con-
ceal. She had often felt that she would
93
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
like to lose the ring or "accidentally" mis-
place it, thus more effectively preventing
an attempt to discover her age. For cer-
A
B
Figure II. — Diagram Illustrating the Making of a
Dream
In the unconscious (B) are contained the mass of repressed
memories and wishes {E, H, F). These repressed mental pro-
cesses in the unconscious are kept from entering consciousness
{A) through the resistance exerted by the censor (C). This
censor is active during sleep and guards the portal going from
94
THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS
tain reasons, she could neither afford to
lose the ring, nor carry out her wish of mis-
placing it. So in the dream, the wish to
lose the ring is actually fulfilled. Under
such conditions, the symptomatic action
of misplacing or losing an object, which is
partially beloved and partially hated, is
completed, not in actuality, where for
social reasons it was impossible, but in a
dream. See Figure II, which illustrates
the mechanism of dreaming and the mak-
ing of a dream.
the unconscious to the conscious, thus preventing the emerging
of painful complexes from the former. Experiences of the day
may act as dream instigators (D) only if these experiences are
able to form associations and set into activity the repressed
wishes which have become accumulated in the unconscious.
These repressed wishes (or dream thoughts) thus instigated
become disguised and condensed before they are allowed to
enter consciousness as the dream itseK (G). The dream as
related is the manifest content; the repressed memories or
wishes which lie in the unconscious are the dream thoughts or
the latent content of the dream. The latent content is the
real and logical mental life, the manifest content is the incon-
gruous and absurd dream. The instigator which sets into ac-
tivity the imconscious wishes and the manner in which these
large groups of wishes become condensed into a dream, is shown
by the direction of the arrows. This simple diagram illustrates,
in a general way, the complex mechanism of dreams.
95
Chapter VI
The Function of Dreams
SINCE everybody dreams, and since
sleep is necessary for the needed re-
pair of our physical energies, a point
of great practical importance concerns it-
self with the question: What is the use of
dreams ? What is gained by dreaming ?
It can be shown through dream-analysis
that dreams subserve a definite function in
our mental life in that they really act as
protectors and not as disturbers of sleep.
This guardianship of sleep by means of
dreams is due to the persistent dynamic
action of the censor.
In sleep the censor is exceedingly active,
and its function is to protect sleep from the
mass of repressed emotions which threaten
to overwhelm the sleeper in the shape of a
96
THE FUNCTION OF DREAMS
dream. This is done by means of the dream
mechanisms already discussed, in which the
dream thoughts are fused and displaced, thus
undergoing such disguise and symboliza-
tion as to be unrecognizable to the sleeper
and consequently not disturbing to him.
When the censor nods or is evaded, when
the literal dream thoughts bombard and
invade consciousness in an undisguised
form, sleep is disturbed and insomnia re-
sults.
This is the origin of many types of so-
called functional insomnia, sleep being
troubled by a series of anxiety dreams.
Only when the dreams are completely
analyzed, and the unconscious mental pro-
cesses thereby become stilled, when the
censor is once more allowed to stand guard
over the portal leading from the uncon-
scious to the conscious, will refreshing
sleep again result. Such a cure can be
brought about only through psycho-analy-
sis.
97
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
It is these two mechanisms of psychical
repression and censorship which prevent
the egotistic and savage wishes of child-
hood from reaching our daily consciousness,
and which only occasionally appear in cer-
tain typical dreams, such as the death of a
parent or the dream of nakedness. These
"typical dreams" will be taken up in detail
in the chapter devoted to that subject.
Thus the wish in the dream need not be
present in the consciousness of the adult
dreamer, but may have existed from early
childhood, and it is the censor which, except
on certain occasions, prevents these un-
conscious childhood wishes from reaching
consciousness in the form of a dream. The
dream also protects sleep by frequently
making the latent dream thoughts unrec-
ognizable, even if these thoughts should
escape the censor's vigilance. Thus the
repressed thoughts enter the dream con-
sciousness because of a disturbance of
what is called in international parlance a
98
THE FUNCTION OF DREAMS
balance of power : either the repression is
not strong, or the censor is lax or tem-
porarily off guard. A kind of a compromise
or psychological treaty takes place between
the censor and the unconscious thoughts,
through which a certain portion of the lat-
ter are allowed to pass into the dream
consciousness. For instance, in certain
erotic dreams, this compromise takes place
by investing the beloved object with the
form of an individual to whom the dreamer
is indifferent, a real process, for the purpose
of disguise, of both condensation and dis-
placement.
An example of the protective function
of a dream is the following :
A highly cultured woman, in the midst
of some difficulties with her husband,
dreamed that she was lying in bed asleep,
while her husband was awake, and she
laughed sarcastically at him. The analysis
of this simple dream revealed an interesting
compromise with her wishes. In the dream
99
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
she realized that it was all a dream and not
reality, a kind of a reinforcement of the
fact that it was nothing but a dream fan-
tasy. Therefore, if it were a dream, there
could be no truth in their strained relations,
and the whole dream revealed the uncon-
scious, repressed wish of the dreamer that
a reconciliation or welding together of the
affections might take place. If she laughed,
the laugh signified that the strained relation
was all a joke and not reality ; in fact, so
unreal was it all that she was able to sleep
peacefully as in the dream.
When we awake from a dream, and the
relaxed censor resumes its sway, the re-
sistance again prevents the unconscious
thoughts from reaching consciousness, and
everything is once more repressed, some-
times very rapidly after awakening. It is
this renewed strength and activity of the
censor which in part explains the rapid
forgetting of dreams. Forgetting dreams,
in fine, is due not so much to the fact that
100
THE FUNCTION OF DREAMS
the vagueness of the dream was such that
it left no traces in memory, for some of
the most intense dreams are quickly for-
gotten and vague ones persistently remem-
bered, but rather to an unconscious wish to
forget. Sometimes only a portion of the
dream is forgotten, and these forgotten
fragments, which contain dream material
so strongly repressed that their forgetting
is an intentional act, usually are recalled
during the course of a dream-analysis,
provided the resistance is not too great.
^ Thus the disguised dream increases the
ability to sleep peacefully, it quiets the
energy which would tend to keep us awake,
and leads to those two great essentials for
refreshing sleep, viz. : relaxation and dis-
interest.^ When the unconscious thoughts
continually escape the censor, either
through their emotional strength or due
1 For the experimental evidence and a discussion of these two
essentials of sleep, see my papers : "The Nature of Sleep," Journal
of Abnormal Psychology, vol. VI, no. 5, and "The Evolution
of Sleep and Hypnosis," ibid., vol. VII, no. 2.
101
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
to a weakness of the censor, insomnia re-
sults. The treatment of these types of
functional insomnia, therefore, must be
by psycho-analysis, whose purpose is to
still or quiet the disturbing, unconscious
thoughts. This is accomplished by the
analysis of the dreams, since the dreams
best reveal the unconscious and disturbing
emotions. In fact, dream-analysis in these
cases of insomnia acts like oil upon the
troubled waters of the unconscious. Some-
times the sleeplessness is due to fear or
anxiety on account of the distressing dreams
which disturb sleep or which awaken the
subject with a start as soon as he falls
asleep. In these cases the sleeplessness be-
comes an act of defence, the subject forces
himself to remain awake to prevent the
occurrence of the distressing dreams. It
is such types of sleeplessness, with the
resulting emotional tension, which cause
also severe states of fatigue. In one
striking case of anxiety hysteria with in-
102
THE FUNCTION OF DREAMS
somnia, such a process as described above
took place. As the dream-analysis pro-
ceeded, the anxiety dreams gradually dis-
appeared, the unconscious emotions were
stilled, and sleep resulted.
This answers the question as to why we
dream or what is the necessity of dream-
ing .^^ Obviously to protect sleep, to make
sleep undisturbed, and thus give us the
needed rest for the repair of our broken-
down physical and psychical energies. This
is contrary to the popular idea that dreams
disturb sleep, for the dream is in reality
the guardian of sleep. Thus a dream is
not a trifle, neither does it deal with trifles.
It fulfills a wish of great personal impor-
tance to the dreamer and acts as a kind of
safety valve for the successful escape of
our repressed emotions.
A pretty illustration of this latter
mechanism was seen in the case of a young
woman, a sufferer from hysteria, in whom
a series of vivid and highly dramatized
103
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
dreams occurred very frequently. Sud-
denly, without any apparent cause, the
dreams abruptly ceased, and a few days
later she developed an hysterical delirium
which contained all the characteristics of
her previous dream life. In this delirium,
the mental condition was that of a dreamy
state of consciousness. What had occurred
was this : the delirium had replaced the
dream, because dreaming had ceased, and
the delirium itself acted as a safety valve
for her repressed, pent-up emotions which
were formerly subserved by the dream.
Thus the numerous dreams protected her
sleeping consciousness, and when dreaming
ceased, consciousness became again pro-
tected by the delirium.
Dreams are always egotistic; they refer
to one's own person or some elements of
one's experience. Sometimes, if the ego
does not appear directly in the dream, it
may be concealed behind some other person
in the dream. Hysteria and dreams, as
104
THE FUNCTION OF DREAMS
already shown, and as will be explained in
more detail later, have thus the same mech-
anism : in the dream the repressed emo-
tional complexes escape in the form of the
vivid hallucination of the dream itself; in
hysteria in the form of bodily symptoms
or the mental state of the hysterical sub-
ject.
105
Chapter VII
Dreams of Children and of Primitive Races
IT has been shown in a previous chapter
that a dream is a reaHzation or fulfill-
ment of repressed desires or wishes.
In adults, this wish is concealed or symbol-
ized in the manifest content of the dream,
and the true wish can be discovered only
through a psycho-analysis of the under-
lying thoughts which give rise to the dream
— namely, the latent content. Even in
adults, however, the dream may contain
fragments of the life of childhood; in
reality, it is the child slumbering in the
adult's unconscious. Thus the study of
children's dreams becomes of paramount
importance, not only in showing the infan-
tile elements which are always present in
the dreams of adults, but also as offering
the best proof of the wish theory of dreams.
106
DREAMS OF CHILDREN
In children the wish is clear, and with few
exceptions the latent and manifest content
are one. The child's wishes during the
day become literally fulfilled in the dream
at night.
Dreams of little children, in fact, accord-
ing to my experience, even the dreams of
children up to ten years of age, are simple
fulfillments of wishes.^ While children's
dreams present no specific problem to be
solved, yet because of their simple structure
they are of value in affording an easy solution
to an important question of dream mech-
anisms, namely : why does the unconscious
furnish the motive power for the wish-
fulfillment only during sleep ? In answer
to this it may be stated that the conscious
wish is the dream instigator in children, as
it is unfulfilled during the day; but at
night it arouses or activates an unconscious
^ See my paper on " Some Hysterical Mechanisms in Children,"
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. IX, Nos. 2 and 3, 1914,
where a number of examples of children's dreams are given and
analyzed.
107
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
wish of a similar nature, each reinforcing
the other. Since the child cannot com-
pletely assert its wishes during the day, the
fulfilled wishes appear at night in dreams,
as the only function of the unconscious is
wishing. The censorship of consciousness
also plays a part in the simple wish dreams
of children. In the sleep of children, the
censor is either very lax or does not exist;
if existent, and the child's unconscious or
conscious desires are such that they are
impossible of fulfillment, a compromise
takes place between the demands of the
child and the activity of the censor.
Thus the most simple dreams are those
of children, because the mental activities
and desires of children are far less compli-
cated and less difficult to fulfill than those
of adults. Savages are also very childlike
in their mental activities, and therefore the
dreams of savages, in the few fortunate
cases in which it has been possible to collect
and study them, strongly resemble the
108
DREAMS OF CHILDREN
dreams of children. It is only in children
and primitive races that the dream on the
surface says what it means without dis-
guise and symbolization. In the civilized
adult, too, because of his childhood fantasies
and infantile history, we find either many
dreams of the same simple type as those of
children, or, in the more complex dreams,
an analysis can demonstrate the desires
of childhood in addition. So we can readily
see from this that no matter how much cul-
ture and mental growth and social conven-
tionalities have helped to develop us and
drag us away from childhood with the
advancing years, there is always within us,
within our unconscious mental life, con-
densed and slumbering, our whole child-
hood history. A wish can awaken our
sleeping childhood, can activate it, and it
bursts out in our dreams. As Stevenson
has so beautifully described it in " Virgin-
ibus Puerisque":
"For as the race of man, after centuries
109
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
of civilization, still keeps some traits of
their barbarian fathers, so man the indi-
vidual is not altogether quit of youth,
when he is already old and honored, and
Lord Chancellor of England. We advance
in years somewhat in the manner of an
invading army in a barren land ; the age
that we have reached, as the phrase goes,
we but hold with an outpost, and still
keep open our communications with the
extreme rear and first beginnings of the
march. There is our true base; that is
not only the beginning, but the perennial
spring of our faculties; and grandfather
William can retire upon occasion into the
green enchanted forest of his boyhood."
Both children and adults are so attracted
to fairy stories or to romantic, imaginative
tales like the "Arabian Nights," because
these seem to realize their childhood wishes
and day-dreams. Children's dreams, there-
fore, because elementary, unsymbolized, and
undisguised, are interesting and valuable as
110
DREAMS OF CHILDREN
illustrating and proving two most important
dream mechanisms, viz. : that the only func-
tion of the unconscious is wishing, and
secondly, that all dreams are fulfillments
of these unconscious motives. Concerning
children's dreams, Freud states as follows : ^
"The wish manifest in the dream must
be an infantile one. In the adult, it (the
wish) originates in the unconscious, while
in the child, where no separation and
censor yet exist between the foreconscious
and the unconscious, or where these are
only in the process of formation, it is an
unfulfilled and unrepressed wish from the
waking state."
From the standpoint of psycho-analysis,
therefore, and particularly in clearing up
the important problem of hysteria in chil-
dren, with the consequent prevention of
adult hysteria, children's dreams are of
value as showing the simplest type of imagi-
nary wish fulfillment. They serve to prove,
^ "Interpretation of Dreams," p. 439.
Ill
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
more clearly than adult dreams, the theory
that all dreams represent unfulfilled wishes.
In children's dreams also, the dream insti-
gators (such as the play activities of the
day or the reading of fairy or hero tales)
may be harmless enough, but the content
of each dream, even though activated by
such a trifling instigator, represents the
fulfilling of important repressed childhood
wishes. Thus children's dreams, like those
of adults, in spite of their simple character,
of the child's elementary desires, and of the
apparently harmless instigators, do not
deal with trifles, but with very important
mental conflicts of the child. For instance,
in the case of hysteria in a little girl, which
was instigated through jealousy of an older
brother because of the maternal over-
exuberant attentions to this brother, the
following dreams occurred :
Dream 1. Her brother seemed to be
taken away from her to a cave where she
also saw her mother dying, and then she
112
DREAMS OF CHILDREN
seemed to go to another house where she
was very happy and teased by children.
Dream 2. She and her brother were out
together, and a witch plagued her and took
her brother away from her and locked him
in an enormous cave.
Now these two dreams clearly represented
the fulfilling of strong, repressed wishes of
the little girl, namely, to have revenge on
her brother and mother and banish them
from the family circle. By this means she
hoped to gain ascendency over the house-
hold and thus end the family conflict. Of
course such a wish, because impossible of
fulfillment in reality, either dominated the
little girl's day-dreams or was suppressed
into unconscious. The wish, however, was
persistently present and was fulfilled at
night in dreams, because the censor was
relaxed and allowed the undisguised wish
to enter the consciousness of the sleeper.
The dream used as material certain fairy
tales, because these served to fulfill the little
113
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
girl's desires. The instigator of these dreams
was harmless enough, but the use made of
the instigator was to fulfill the unconscious
but repressed wish, i.e., to get rid of both
mother and brother. Thus out of child-
hood wishes arise mental conflicts which
may cause the important and apparently
contradictory dreams of adult life, such as
the dreams of the death of a near or dear
relative (father or mother^) or the em-
barrassment dreams of nakedness.
Sometimes, too, children will use the
material of an interesting fairy story as
the content of an entire dream, in order to
continue the excitement of the story during
the night. A five-year-old boy, for in-
stance, after having had a portion of "Alice
in Wonderland" read to him, became in-
tensely excited and interested, so much so
that it became necessary to discontinue
the reading for the day. However, the
next morning on awakening, he sat up in
^ The so-called (Edipus or Electra-Complex dreams.
114
DREAMS OF CHILDREN
bed and spontaneously said: "O dear me!
I am surprised to see myself in my own bed,
because my Teddy bear went down a hole,
and I went after him, and then I thought
I swam in my own tears." Here was
evidently a pure wish dream, a desire to
continue the day's excitement caused by
the story, plus the wish to continue playing
with his Teddy bear. Another boy, age
four, who during the day had been to a
children's party, betrayed the wish to con-
tinue the good time he had at the party by
the following dream: '* Daddy, when I
am in bed with my eyes closed, I can see
Barbara's party."
The dreams of primitive races of men in
many ways strongly resemble the dreams of
children, because, as was previously men-
tioned, savages possess many childlike and
primitive activities, the same as do civilized
children. In fact, up to a certain age, the
civilized child is really a savage, with his
strong egotism and feelings of rivalry and
115
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
jealousy, and his few or no altruistic ten-
dencies. From a psycho-analytic viewpoint
all war is a form of reversion to the un-
bridled fury of our childhood Ufe, at a
time when there was no repression. In
the child as in the savage, the wish and
the thought are synonymous, — there is no
distinction or separation; both want their
desires immediately gratified, although such
gratification may be impossible in reality.
The dreams of the American negro, particu-
larly the so-called pure-blooded negro, are
simple wish fulfillments, because the mental
activities of the race are less complicated
than those of the Caucasian.
A Yahagan Indian, for instance, in trad-
ing groceries with a settler stated:^ "Me
buy English biscuit and me dream have
more English biscuit and things and wake
up and find no got any." This is an ex-
1 This and other dreams of primitive tribes, as well as for the
reference to Grubb, were kindly fm-nished me by the well-known
explorer, Charles W. Furlong, F.R.G.S.
116
DREAMS OF CHILDREN
ample of a pure wish dream, like the dream
of a Uttle child. If a Carib Indian believes
he has a specific enemy or dislikes a par-
ticular Indian, he will dream that this In-
dian is attempting to kill him, the thought
being father to the wish. He will interpret
the dream as an actual attempt on his life,
and thus the repressed wish to get ''square"
with his enemy is fulfilled in the dream, the
dream thus furnishing the excuse for his
already wished-for revenge.
In a most interesting book,^ Grubb
states that "dreams play a very important
part in the life of an Indian and to some
extent govern many of his actions. . . .
Dreaming is, in the opinion of the Indian,
an adventurous journeying of the soul
attended by much danger. While the
soul wanders, being ethereal, it is able to
gratify its desires more freely than if it
were in the body. ... As the Indian
^ W. B. Grubb, "An Unknown People in an Unknown Land."
(Refers mainly to the Lengua Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco
region.)
117
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
looks upon the body only as a house or as
an instrument in the hands of the soul, he
considers that what he dreams about is in
reality a declaration of the will of the soul
and therefore, whenever possible, that will
must be gratified through the body." In this
attitude of the Indian towards his dreams
we seem to have a very simple and primi-
tive conception of the Freudian theory that
dreams represent fulfilled wishes. In a pre-
vious contribution,^ the following statement
was made : ''There is a certain resemblance
likewise between the mental life of the
savage and the neurotic, for instance, in the
relationship of the taboo and the neurotic
obsessions or obsessional prohibition, a
comparative feature which is best seen in
the fear of touching certain objects {delire
de toucher). Suppression is the result of
our complex civilization. Savages, like
children, have not learned to suppress."
1 Isador H. Coriat, "Abnormal Psychology," 2nd edition,
New York, 1914 (pp. 331-332).
118
DREAMS OF CHILDREN
Several pure wish dreams of these In-
dians are given by the author, and from
these the following is selected as suffi-
ciently illustrating the type of material:
" While sleeping in an Indian village one
morning, I awoke long before the first light
and noticed a number of men sitting round
a fire engaged in an animated conversation.
Joining the party, I found that they were
laying plans for a hunting expedition. The
night before I had heard nothing of such a
project. I found that they were proposing
to sally forth to some open plains, some dis-
tance to the north, where they expected to
find ostriches. While listening to the con-
versation, I gathered that one of the men
had just had a dream, and in it he had
seen ostriches in that district."
Thus the inability of the Indian to dis-
tinguish a dream from reality had betrayed
his wish, a condition exactly similar to
dreams of civilized children. A four-year-
old boy, for instance, on being brought into
119
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
a room to view the expected Christmas tree,
carefully touched the various branches of
the tree with his fingers. This was a rem-
iniscence, no doubt, of a dream in which
the tree vanished on awakening, and thus,
in this symptomatic action, he wished to
assure himself of the tree's reality.
120
Chapter VIII
Typical Dreams
THE analysis and correct interpre-
tation of a dream presupposes a
certain degree of knowledge and
technical skill. A dream cannot be inter-
preted, however, unless the dreamer con-
scientiously and without resistance fur-
nishes us with the instigators and the
complex latent thoughts which lie behind
the dream, and from this mass of material
the real meaning of the dream can be
constructed. There are certain dreams,
though, which nearly every one has
dreamed in much the same manner, which
are clearly defined and need no elaborate
interpretation. In fact, the dream really
interprets itself, and a knowledge of certain
dream symbohsms enables one to penetrate
121
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
the inner meaning of such a dream. Be-
cause these dreams occur to us all and arise
from emotions common to the human race,
they have been termed typical dreams.
The subject of typical dreams is very wide
and complex. Only the general outlines
can be considered here, since such dreams
are markedly symbolic and require for
their correct understanding an accurate
knowledge of dream symboHsm.
A typical dream frequently deals with an
unpleasant or painful situation without any
unpleasant emotion in the dream itself;
in fact, the dreamer may remain totally
indifferent to the situation. This is partic-
ularly well seen in those dreams in which
the dreamer appears only partially clothed
in the presence of strangers or friends.
The dreamer in such situations is totally un-
embarrassed, and the spectators completely
indifferent to the negligee attire of the sub-
ject. For instance, one subject dreamed
that he was in his bedroom only partially
TYPICAL DREAMS
dressed, and two women friends seemed to
be in the room. He was totally unabashed,
while the women did not seem to notice his
condition. The meaning of this and of
other typical dreams, as, for instance, the
dream of the death of a beloved relative,
usually father or mother, opens up interest-
ing vistas in an unconscious mental life,
particularly the repressed emotions of our
childhood.
In the above dream of being partially
clothed, it will be noticed that the sense of
modesty referable to our bodies, which
occurs in all civilized and adult individuals,
is totally lacking. It is only in the child
or in the very primitive savage that such
a sense of modesty has not yet developed,
and it is this fact, as will be shown later,
which not only enters the make-up of the
dream, but provides the explanation for
the meaning of the dream. The real emo-
tion of the dream in these cases lies in the
dream thoughts or latent content of the
123
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
dream and not in the manifest content or
the dream as remembered.
SuperJBcially, such dreams seem to con-
tradict the theory that all dreams represent
the imaginary fulfillment of wishes, for,
one will ask, who wishes to appear naked or
partially clothed in public, or who, however
depraved in morals, wishes for the death
of the father or mother. Such desires
belong to a very primitive state of society,
or to the age of earliest childhood, when
the egotistic child still possesses many of
the instincts of the savage and will desist
from nothing to gain its own ends. Such de-
sires, if they existed in childhood, seem to
have disappeared in our adult life, but in
reality they are only repressed into the un-
conscious. Thus such types of dreams re-
vert to our childhood, when jealousy of
one of the parents existed, or when the
child had so little modesty that insufficient
clothing failed to cause the slightest em-
barrassment. No one can doubt that such
124
TYPICAL DREAMS
emotions take place in children, particu-
larly when the child, as occurs in so many
cases, has a stronger emotional attachment
for one parent than for another. There-
fore, the wish concealed within such a
type of dream does not actually exist in
adult life, but did at one time exist in the
childhood of the individual and became
subsequently repressed. The repressed
feelings are so successfully kept down by our
moral censorship that they appear only in
dreams. The typical dream therefore, does
not contradict the wish theory, but actually
confirms it.
The dream of the death of a parent,
either the father or the mother, according
to whether the dreamer is a son or daughter,
represents a family conflict arising in early
childhood. The son, for instance, becomes
jealous of the attention of the mother for
the father and wishes to replace the latter
in her affections. Thus a mental conflict
arises, and the only manner in which, accord-
125
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
ing to the childish idea, such a replacement
can be accomplished, is for the father to be
out of the way, or absent, which to the mind
of the child is synonymous with death. The
child struggles against this idea, as such a
conception is opposed to its innate moral
attitude, and as a result of the struggle, the
wish is strongly repressed in the uncon-
scious. It appears later in adult life in
the form of a dream of the death of the
father, whose meaning is that although the
dreamer does not now wish his father dead,
yet the desire once existed at some early
period of the individual's life. In the
daughter the opposite process takes place;
it is the dream of the death of the mother,
because in very early childhood the girl
wished to replace her mother in her father's
affections.
Such types of dreams represent the
struggles and perplexities of our infantile
mental life, and like all typical dreams are
repressed wishes from our infantile reminis-
126
TYPICAL DREAMS
cences. The typical dream, then, contains
wishes which we will not admit in our wak-
ing life, but secret wishes, dating from our
earliest infancy, there find expression. This
applies to all typical dreams, although the
acknowledgment of this fact will be found
very difficult by the uninitiated. In this
type of dream of the death of a dear rela-
tive, there is usually deep grief, although the
death of such a relative may have been most
remote from the mind of the dreamer. The
dream means that the dreamer wished the
relative, no matter how near or dear, really
dead. Of course, this will excite an indig-
nant denial in every one, but the matter be-
comes clear when it is emphasized that such
a wish does not exist now, but did exist at
some remote period of childhood. Some-
times the dream is literal, sometimes in a
veiled and disguised form.
This typical dream makes up the (Edipus-
motive of childhood ; every child which has
such wishes is in reality a little QEdipus.
127
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
With the advance of adult culture and of
the ethical and moral interpretation of
life, such a wish, because it is incompatible
with our personality, is repressed into the
unconscious. In all of us this strongly
repressed emotion exists, but is under con-
trol. Because it bears so strong a resem-
blance to the myth of (Edipus, such a
group of repressed ideas is termed the
(Edipus-complex. Normal individuals suc-
cessfully repress it however, and it only
appears in their dreams. An unsuccessful
repression of the complex may give rise to
various psychoneurotic disturbances, and
these psychoneurotics, therefore, show in
their symptoms many residuals of their
childhood mental and emotional make-up.^
Thus the symboUsm of these typical
dreams does not belong to the dream itself or
to the dreamer, but to the unconscious think-
1 For the discussion of the relation of the (Edipus-complex to
nervous diseases, see my paper, "The (Edipus-Complex in the
Psychoneuroses," Journal of Abnormal Psychology, vol. VII, no. 3,
1912.
128
TYPICAL DREAMS
ing of the human race. The dream merely
takes advantage of this unconscious sym-
boHsm for the purpose of disguising the
dream. Since the emotion which produces
the dream is a common emotion of man-
kind, it can, when it occurs in a social group,
either give rise to a myth, as shown in the
(Edipus story, or, if in the individual, to
the typical dream.
An example of such an (Edipus dream is
the following :
Dream. He seemed to be in a store,
and his father was there, like a shadow
and acting in the capacity of a clerk.
Analysis. The subject in his early
childhood had developed a feeling of resent-
ment towards his father and an over-exu-
berant love for his mother. Consciously,
he had never wished his father dead,
but in the dream he has placed his father
in the background ; in fact, he has become
a mere shadow. Note, too, how he further
humiliates his father. He makes him a
129
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
clerk in the dream, whereas in reahty his
father was the proprietor of the store in
which he appeared.
The following dream of a young man
offers an excellent illustration of the non-
embarrassment dream of nakedness. It
will be noted that the dream is a more in-
tense form of the episode of being insuf-
ficiently clothed, yet both types of dreams
represent the same repressed desire carried
over from childhood :
Dream. An elderly woman took the
dreamer to a pond of water which had
muddy banks. It appeared as though he
were to bathe in this pool. She had with
her a little girl, and it seemed as if it were
planned that the child bathe with him.
No bathing suits were visible. Appar-
ently he was expected to bathe naked,
and he hinted to the woman that
such a procedure would not be exactly
proper. The woman replied that every-
thing would be all right. Then he went
130
TYPICAL DREAMS
into the water naked in front of the child
and the woman. There was not the sHght-
est sense of embarrassment; in fact, there
was a feehng of pleasure in the nakedness
and splashing in the water. After he had
finished bathing, he clambered up the bank,
and neither he nor the two spectators
seemed embarrassed.
Analysis. This dream is typical. The
child was unknown to the dreamer, while
the woman was partially recognized as a
neighbor with whom he had only a slight
acquaintance. So far as could be deter-
mined by the analysis, there were no dream
instigators, neither did the subject know
the origin of the dream. The dream, there-
fore, must have been the symbolization of
some repressed thoughts from the uncon-
scious mental life. It will be noticed that
in this dream the subject is not ashamed of
his nakedness, although the spectators in
the dream were strangers to him and both
of the opposite sex. In fact, he was not
131
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
only indifferent, but experienced a keen
sense of pleasure in the nakedness and
splashing in the pool. This dream cannot
express the fulfillment of an adult wish,
since social conventionalities and the re-
straints imposed by culture and adult
modesty would be decidedly against such a
wish being fulfilled, even in a dream. The
dream must, therefore, like the (Edipus-
complex dreams, have had its origin in
the past life of the individual, when such
a desire existed. This desire, with its
abandonment of all social restraint, could
only have existed in childhood; in fact,
all these dreams of being naked or appear-
ing in company with insufficient clothing
can be traced back to a period in childhood
when such wishes existed and were not
repressed. Such a dream, therefore, rep-
resents a wish to be younger, to be a
child again, with all the wild abandon of
a child.
Other typical dreams which very fre-
132
TYPICAL DREAMS
quently occur are those of tooth pulhng,
flying, faUing, fire, dreams of burglars, etc.
It is impossible to enter into the meaning
and analysis of all these types of dreams.
One dream will be given however, a typical
flying dream. Like all flying dreams, this
signifies in part a wish to do as one pleases,
to be free from social restraint, and not
bound down by the conventionalities of
culture and civilization. This desire existed
in childhood, but it is impossible of ful-
fillment in our complex civilization, and
consequently the childhood desire is ful-
filled only in a dream. These dreams are
characterized by a keen sense of delight
and freedom. An example of such a fan-
tastic and imaginative flying dream is as
follows : ^
Dream. ''I dreamed we were living in
a town on a hill-slope which was skirted
by a steep ravine. On the further side of
the ravine a winding road went through
^ Given verbatim as written by the dreamer.
133
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
the woods. My mother asked me to go
to the other end of the town on an errand.
I started but concluded first to take a
walk, so I went to the road in the woods
and walked a long distance. Suddenly I
saw some clothes hanging on a bush as if
to dry. I knew some one was near and
became frightened; I turned to go back.
A man stepped into the road in front of
me. He was dressed in a rough negligee
shirt and dark trousers with a leather belt.
His face was fine, almost delicate, and he
had extremely curly yellow hair and closely
cut beard. It was so yellow that it looked
almost like metal. I remember thinking the
man out of keeping with his clothes. He
simply stood there and looked at me in-
tently. I felt that I could not go deeper
into the woods and it was impossible to
get past him into the town.
"Suddenly I bethought me of the power
I had to rise in the air at will. I concen-
trated all my thoughts upon escaping in
134
TYPICAL DREAMS
that way. As I went up and up, I looked
steadily into the face of the man standing
silently in the road watching me until he
seemed a mere speck in the road. Then I
moved toward the village. I could see
the forest and the road and noticed many
telegraph wires stretching beneath me. As
I reached the ravine at the edge of the
town, I thought it best to descend, as the
people might wonder at seeing me in the
air. I started down, but I went faster
than I intended to go and barely missed
being stranded on the telegraph wires. I
realized that I must reduce my speed or be
hurt, so I exerted all my will power and
succeeded in alighting safely on my feet.
I walked home without doing the errand
I started for and went into the house to
my mother. Then I awoke."
The discussion of typical dreams leads
to another subject of great interest, which
has recently attracted the attention of
psycho-analysts, namely, the relationship
135
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
between dreams and myths. In general
it may be stated that the psychological
structure and meaning of both dreams and
myths are the same. A myth is a waking
dream, a fantasy. Dreams frequently orig-
inate from the emotions common to man-
kind and thus produce the typical dreams
already described, and the same common
emotion gives rise to typical myths. An
analysis of typical dreams, therefore, fur-
nishes the best standpoint for the analysis
of universal myths and legends; for in-
stance, the childhood wish for the death of
the father as forming the groundwork for
the (Edipus-complex dreams and (Edipus
myth or the dreams of nakedness with lack
of sense of shame as furnishing the basis
for the myth of a Paradise or Garden of
Eden. Both these dreams and myths are
symbols, and such symbolism has its roots
in the unconscious. In the individual this
unconscious symbolism leads to dreams;
in the race and society, to myths, legends,
136
TYPICAL DREAMS
and fairy tales. The myth is therefore a
fragment of the repressed hfe of the race.
Both myths and dreams are activated by
unconscious mental processes, particularly
the infantile and primitive elements of the
unconscious with their consequent repression.
We dream, not only in sleep, but also have
our artificial dreams. It is these artificial
dreams which, as individual products, may
enter into the spirit of a race and so give
rise to myths and fairy tales. The ultimate
origin of all myths is to be found in the
creative faculty of the unconscious, a
faculty which is equally able to make night
dreams or artificial dreams, myths, and
fairy tales, the only difference being, not
in the fundamental mechanism, which is
always identical, but in the use of the
material employed and its dramatization.
Thus is explained the horror of the dreams
of the death of near and dear relatives,
which were wished, not in adult life, but
in the early, prehistoric period of our child-
137
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
hood and lie deeply buried in our adult
unconscious. The wish revealed itself only
in dreams when the censor was relaxed or
ceased to act, but even here the meaning
of the dream can be brought out only
through a searching psycho-analysis.
Myths, like dreams, are symbolized, and
the myth, which is really the manifest
content, contains within itself the latent
emotions of the collective race spirit, and
thus comes to express something which its
outer form does not suggest or signify.
Such symbolisms have many dream-like
attributes. They are not only highly con-
densed products of the thought of the race,
but like typical dreams they have their roots
in the archaic and primitive types of racial
thinking. Thus in a more or less modified
form they can appear as almost identical
myths in various ethnic groups, which may
be separated by immense periods of time
and under different conditions of cultural
advancement.
138
TYPICAL DREAMS
The symbolisms which are so frequent
in art and in ecclesiastical architecture,
are also examples of such symbolic thinking
applied to the creative imagination. The
creative imagination itself, which is really
a type of a day-dream, is constantly
striving to express its desires and wishes,
thus resembling our dreams at night. The
artist and the poet, like the dreamer,
express their thoughts in symbols whose
origin is frequently unknown to the individ-
ual, but which can repeatedly be traced
to the unconscious mental life. It is there
that the motive or creative impulse lies.
An excellent example of such a symboliza-
tion in popular thought is the mediaeval
idea of the devil. Analysis of the concep-
tion of the devil shows that it is really the
exteriorization of a forbidden and repressed
wish. This is well seen in Giotto's painting
of the temptation of Judas, where the devil
is portrayed as a shadow behind Judas and
pushing forward the hand of Judas for the
139
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
pieces of silver. In "Faust," too, Mephis-
topheles is symbolized as the guilty con-
science, the forbidden desire projected out-
wards in the shape of a devil. As so clearly
expressed by Taylor : ^
"But how are sins thought to come to
men and women in the Middle Ages, and
especially to those who were earnestly
striving to escape them.^^ Rather than
fruit of the naughtiness of the human heart,
they come through the malicious sugges-
tions, the temptations, of a Tempter.
They were in fine the machinations of the
Devil."
1 "The Mediseval Mind," vol. I, p. 487.
140
Chapter IX
Prophetic Dreams
IN the astronomical sciences, the future
may often be accurately prophesied ;
for instance, the movements of the
stars, the return of comets after their vast
journeys through space, the coming of
eclipses; or in chemistry, the periodic law
by which the existence of many new ele-
ments was predicted. Contrary to the
popular belief, however, it is extremely
doubtful if dreams can in any way foretell
future events. Freud states as follows
concerning this point :
"The belief in prophetic dreams numbers
many adherents, because it can be sup-
ported by the fact that some things really
do happen in the future as they were pre-
viously foretold by the wish of the dream.
141
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
But in this there is httle to be wondered
at, as many far-reaching deviations may
be regularly demonstrated between a dream
and the fulfillment, which the credulity of
the dreamer prefers to neglect."
For instance, many people have dreamed
of some burning ambition being realized,
and some time later this ambition is ful-
filled in reality. The wish has thus been
fulfilled both in the dream and in actual
life. From this we must not conclude
that the dream possesses any prophetic
function, or that it can in any way forecast
the future, but one must interpret both the
dream and its later fulfillment as being
merely the realized wish. The wish pro-
duced the dream, and in the ambition of
every-day life to fulfill this wish there was
a constant striving, and finally it was
actually fulfilled. The dream took place
because a dream never concerns itself with
trifles, and consequently the fulfillment of
the wish had a strong personal motive.
142
PROPHETIC DREAMS
Sometimes, also, we dream of a certain
person whom we have never met before
and several days later or even the next day,
lo ! to our surprise, we meet the individual.
The dream is not prophetic. What occurs
is this. The strange individual dreamed
of is usually a condensation, like a composite
photograph, and on meeting the actual
stranger, we unconsciously take one element
of this composite dream figure and apply
it to the stranger. Thence arises the
illusion, for it is only an illusion, of having
met a total stranger, who had been pre-
viously seen only in a dream. In fact, if
such accounts as these be carefully analyzed,
it will be found that the person dreamed of
never actually resembled the person later
met.
During sleep, also, the brain admits and
is influenced by impressions received by
the various organs of the body, impressions
sometimes of so slight a character that they
are not felt in the waking state. In morbid
143
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
conditions of certain organs, therefore, it
is possible that in their early stages these
conditions, which are not noticed at all by
the waking consciousness, may give rise
to various types of dreams, particularly
dreams of anxiety. Medical writers have
long admitted this significance of the dream
thus protecting sleep and drawing the at-
tention of the sleeper to morbid disturbances
of various organs. Freud, who seems to
have thoroughly reviewed the literature on
the subject, states as follows concerning
these types of dreams :
"Serious disturbances of the internal
organs apparently act as incitors of dreams
in a considerable number of persons. At-
tention is quite generally called to the
frequency of anxiety dreams in the disease
of the heart and lungs. . . . Tissie even
assumes that the diseased organs impress
upon the dream content their characteristic
features. The dreams of persons suffering
from disease of the heart are generally very
144
PROPHETIC DREAMS
brief and terminate in a terrified awakening ;
the situation of death under terrible circum-
stances almost always plays a part in their
content. Those suffering from disease of the
lungs dream of suffocation, of being crowded,
and of flight ; and a great many of them are
subject to the well-known nightmare which,
by the way, Boerner has succeeded in pro-
ducing experimentally by lying on the face
and closing up the openings of the respira-
tory organs. In digestive disturbances the
dream contains ideas from the sphere of
enjoyment and disgust. Finally, the in-
fluence of sexual excitement on the dream
content is perceptible enough in every one's
experience, and lends the strongest support
to the entire theory of the dream excitation
through organ sensation." ^
Of course attempts at such diagnostic
performance from a dream are full of dis-
appointment and fraught with the greatest
danger.
1 "The Interpretation of Dreams," pp. 27-28.
145
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
Sometimes a temporary physical disturb-
ance may act as the inciter of a dream, but
becomes so disguised by the censor for the
purpose of protecting sleep and thus pre-
venting awakening, that the disturbance it-
self remains unknown to the sleeper until
he awakens. A pretty example is the fol-
lowing dream of a young married woman.
She dreamed that she was feeling ill and
consulted a woman physician, who said to
her: "You are worrying about something,
a man by the name of X." The analysis
of this brief dream is interesting. On
awakening, she found that the left eye was
swollen and inflamed apparently from some
insect bite during the night. The name of
the eye specialist whom both she and her
husband had consulted in the past, and in
whom she had great confidence, was Doctor
X., the name being identical with the one
in the dream. Thus the pain and discom-
fort of the swollen eye sent a disguised sub-
stitute in the form of a distorted and un-
146
PROPHETIC DREAMS
recognizable dream into the consciousness
of the sleeper, so as not to awaken her.
The dream was really a desire or wish on
the part of the censor to protect the sleeper,
and this wish was fulfilled by translating
a bodily discomfort into a meaningless
dream. The dream therefore did not dis-
turb sleep ; in reality it protected it. The
discrepancy concerning the absence of pain
or discomfort in the dream is readily ex-
plained when we remember that the emo-
tion of discomfort belonged to the latent
content and not to the manifest content
of the dream.
A dream may often solve situations, im-
portant crises, and mental conflicts which
may bafl3e one in the waking life. The
situation and the conflict are cleared up
in the dream by a kind of unconscious in-
cubation of wishes, and only in this sense the
dream may be said to be prophetic.
An example of this is the following. A
young woman, after her betrothal, began
147
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
to be troubled by worries, perplexities, and
mental conflicts concerning the decisive
step she had taken, wondered if she really
loved her betrothed, and whether or not
it might be well to break the engagement.
One night she had the following dream :
Dream. She seemed to be in a large
house, partly clear and partly dimly rec-
ognized ; her fiance was there, only in
the dream he seemed to be her husband.
Her mother-in-law was also present, knit-
ting, and paid not the slightest attention
to her. Then it seemed as though she came
down-stairs with her hair disarranged and
wearing a light dressing-gown.
Analysis. This is a pretty example of
a prophetic wish dream, which solved the
situation which was baffling her and causing
the perplexity in her waking life. In the
dream, her mental conflict is cleared up, the
problem has been solved for her by her
secondary consciousness during sleep. In
the dream, she felt thoroughly at home in
148
PROPHETIC DREAMS
the house, although it did appear strange;
no one noticed her, and yet her feehngs
were not hurt or ruffled ; and she was able
to go about clothed in a dressing-gown
without the slightest embarrassment. Now
this situation could only have taken place
where there was great intimacy, and such
intimacy could only have been brought
about if she were a member of her fiance's
family, that is, actually married to him.
The dream is a wish dream of family in-
timacy. Therefore, in spite of her doubts,
she really wanted to marry this particular
person, to become a member of his family.
Her problems are solved in the dream;
her real, unconscious wish has neutralized
her perplexity and is fulfilled. But since
the fulfillment can only be brought about
in the future, the dream is prophetic only
in the sense that her wish for a happy
marriage is projected into the future and
the perplexing situation solved, in the
form of a dream.
149
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
I cannot leave the subject of prophetic
dreams without another example of practi-
cal medical interest. A five-year-old boy
had the following dream :
Dream. A number of dogs came to the
door of his house, and one little black dog
actually knocked at the door. As he was
coming up the steps, he grew larger and
larger and was changed into a large and
fierce white dog. Then he came up to the
little boy and started to eat him, a procedure
which was not objected to, because the little
boy felt that he would not remain in thQ
dog's mouth very long.
This is a typical anxiety dream which
often gives rise to nightmares in children.
From this dream a temporary anxiety
hysteria was predicted in the child, a ner-
vous disturbance which actually took place
a short time later. The boy became dis-
satisfied because he did not care to live in
the country ; he wanted the excitement of
the city. His uncle, who was a physician,
150
PROPHETIC DREAMS
lived in the city, and the boy had visited
him shortly before the dream took place.
Therefore a simulated illness which later
took place, in which he claimed that he
had an earache, pretended to cough, etc.,
were all for the purpose of again visiting
his uncle. The symptoms completely dis-
appeared within a few days, on advising
the parents to use purposeful neglect of
the child's complaints.
The point which I wish to emphasize by
this brief recital is this : that the morbid
anxiety produced both the dream and
hysteria ; both had the same mechanism, and
from the dream it was possible to predict
with a fair amount of certainty the onset of
psychoneurotic symptoms. In fact, these
symptoms were actually predicted at the
time of the dream, and several days before
the symptoms themselves had made their
actual appearance.
I am very skeptical concerning prophetic
dreams which actually foretell the future.
151
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
From a strictly scientific standpoint, such
an interpretation would be very superficial
in that it did not take into full cognizance
all the complex factors which may produce
a dream. For instance, it must be proven,
in the analysis of such a dream, that the
event "foretold" in the future never existed
as a wish in either the conscious or uncon-
scious thought of the dreamer. In my
experience, I have yet failed to find such
a genuine prophetic dream.
152
Chapter X
Artificial Dreams
BY an artificial dream is meant a
dream which a person consciously
makes up when requested to fabri-
cate what he would consider to be a genuine
dream. When these artificial dreams are
analyzed, they will be found to contain the
same mechanisms as genuine dreams, and
behind them will be discovered identical un-
conscious mental processes. In the analysis
of such artificial dreams, the same wishes
appear as in real dreams. How does this in-
teresting process take place .^ How can a
conscious imitation of a dream contain the
same elusive and wish-fulfilling thoughts as
a real dream .^ It is here that the theory
of psychical determinism comes to our aid.
It has been shown that there is no more
room for chance in the mental world than
153
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
there is in the physical world. The un-
conscious and likewise the foreconscious
exerts a persistent dynamic influence on
our behavior, on the formation of com-
plexes, in every element of our thoughts,
in the actions of every-day life and in our
dreams. Thus every conscious mental oc-
currence bears a direct and causal relation
to its unconscious or foreconscious source.
For this reason, any series of thoughts or
ideas given at random, any association or
group of associations in the so-called free
association procedures, are really not free,
but are motivated or caused by unconscious
or foreconscious mental processes. In
sleep, this type of mental activity causes
dreams ; during the day it produces reveries
and symptomatic actions like slips of the
tongue or pen. All reveries, like all dreams,
are the fulfillment of wishes. The fore-
conscious or unconscious can be brought
into activity only by a wish or desire, and
the realization of that wish in the thought
154
ARTIFICIAL DREAMS
processes is either the night dream or the
day re very. Sometimes this process of
day-dreams is simple, sometimes it is highly
dramatized, like the day-dream of the lover
to have a quiet home and a happy family,
or of the boy who wishes and at the same
time identifies himself with the heroes of
history or romance.
Thus the revery, like the dream, results
from the same motivating process, a simple
or highly disguised wish, and in it can be
found the same mechanisms as in dreams.
The day-dream, too, may be called the mani-
fest content of our latent or repressed wishes.
Thus a revery is the product of an individual
fantasy, sometimes voluntary, sometimes
involuntary, but in either case not the prod-
uct of chance or of logic. It differs from
the genuine dream only in point of time,
one taking place at night, the other during
the day. This day-dreaming has been
termed ''autistic thinking," and its chief
characteristic is to represent desires im-
155
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
possible of fulfillment in reality, as actually
fulfilled in the imagination during the day.
The symbolism of both dreams and autistic
thinking has its roots in the unconscious ;
it is not made or invented, it is only dis-
covered by the analysis. As Bleuler states
in his description of autistic thinking : ^
''Each of us has also his fairy tale. He
does not indeed believe himself to live it;
only when he is quite alone and his thoughts
are let loose does it come to light. The man
is then rich, attractive, healthy, and hand-
some. He always chooses those advantages
in which he is most hopelessly lacking.
Directly reality gains .its sway, the play-
thing will be thrust hastily back into the
cupboard, where it is hidden, not only from
strangers, but from the owner himself;
for, once outside the dream, he is not at all
aware how far he can really identify him-
self with its characters. The cupboard
*E. Bleuler, "Autistic Thinking," American Journal of Insanity,
1914.
156
ARTIFICIAL DREAMS
into which the toy is put is our own brain,
and it never shuts tight. Without our
noticing it, the imprisoned fairy very often
stretches out a hand. She guides our taste
in the choice of a tie, she guides our hand
when we make the flourish to our signature.
By our hearing, our voice, the choice of our
phraseology, she shows the expert the trend
of our aspirations."
Thus in our reveries we can never wholly
emancipate ourselves from our wishes and
our ambitions, which are really our inner-
most desires, and it is these wishes which
make up our artificial dreams and give
them the same mechanism and significance
as the spontaneous dreams. For instance,
a young woman who had a sense of timidity
and inferiority, when asked to give an
artificial dream, replied very significantly :
''I can't make up a dream that is not what
I'd like — I'd like to be a great orator and
talk and hold an audience." Thus the
day-dream expressed the fulfillment of her
157
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
wishes, and these wishes were a kind of
compensation for her own defects of
character and her feeHng of inferiority.
When a subject, therefore, is asked to
fabricate a dream, that is, to produce an
artificial dream by stating at random any
thoughts which may come into his head,
such a product is not the haphazard fantasy
of his waking thoughts (because such a
thing is impossible) but is motivated or
produced by his conscious or unconscious
wishes. For instance, on one occasion I
requested a severe stammerer to fabricate
a dream, and he immediately replied: "I
dream that I am addressing a large audience
without stammering." On another occa-
sion, I asked a subject whose nervous dis-
turbance had produced an outward im-
pression of stupidity, to fabricate a dream,
and the immediate answer was: "I dream
that I am bright and alert." In both these
instances the replies showed fulfillments of
wishes, the same as in genuine dreams.
158
ARTIFICIAL DREAMS
A highly intelKgent unmarried woman,
who was undergoing the psycho-analytic
treatment, at my request and in my pres-
ence wrote the following artificial dreams.
These are given verbatim with the outlines
of the analysis of each dream, to explain
the underlying wishes.
Artificial Dream I. "Washing a little
newly born baby in a wash bowl. There
seems to be a woman in bed, not well enough
to be up. Face is not distinct, but the hair
is dark. The woman seems to be myself.
The baby is taken out of the bowl and
given to her to nurse. Then a tall, happy-
looking, fair-haired man came to the door.
He appears younger than she, and she is
happy to see him."
Analysis. Her wish for a happy mar-
riage and motherhood is fulfilled in this
artificial dream as a pure imaginative prod-
uct, the same as the wish for motherhood
appeared in a genuine symbolized dream
a few nights previously.
159
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
Artificial Dream II. "An enormous
glass chandelier in a concert hall full of
people. It is a vocal recital. I am on the
stage singing."
Analysis. She has always longed to
sing in public, but her nervous disturbance
(morbid fear) made such a thing impossible.
This artificial dream therefore represents a
fulfillment of her desire to sing in public
freely and spontaneously.
Artificial Dream III. "Interior of a
Dutch house, and a Dutch housewife with
a funny head-dress, making bread on a
big board. There is a window at her
right, and kitchen utensils are hung up
on the wall. Bread then seems to be in
pans. She is putting it in the oven, and
as she turns around, a troop of from four
to six children come in from school, and
she greets them and runs around to get
dinner for them."
Analysis. The instigator of these
dreams was a copy of The Necklace by
160
ARTIFICIAL DREAMS
Vermeer of Delft which hung in my
office. The dreamer had been in Holland
and had recently been reading a book of
travel about Holland. In this travel book,
the father and mother were represented as
travelling with their two children. The
father knew Dutch history and so kept
the children informed; the mother in the
book seemed to know all about Dutch
housekeeping. In this artificial dream she
identifies herself with the mother and
wishes that she were in the mother's place.
Therefore, like the first artificial dream,
this dream represents, in a somewhat differ-
ent arrangement of material, a wish for
motherhood and a happy home.
Artificial Dream IV. " She seemed to
be a young woman again, at college and
walking on the campus with other girls."
Analysis. A wish to be younger and
to live her life over again.
In all these artificial dreams, a desire or
wish is actually fulfilled or realized; in
161
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
fact, an idea which merely existed in the
region of possibihty is here replaced by a
vision or mental image of its accomplish-
ment. Thus we have the same mechanism
as in genuine dreams.
Artificial dreams, like genuine dreams,
have frequently interwoven within them
childhood fantasies, such as the imagined
family conflicts or romances of the child.
This is particularly seen in the day-dreams
of children and adults, both of which bear a
strong relationship to hysterical fantasies.
These day-dreams or reveries serve for the
fulfillment of wishes and for the righting
of the conflicts of life, both of which cannot
be realized in actuality. They realize, in
the imagination, either personal ambitions
or erotic feelings.
Experimental dreams, produced artifi-
cially by hypnotic command, also substan-
tiate many of the theories of Freud. For
instance, in some experiments when the
command was given to dream something
162
ARTIFICIAL DREAMS
grossly sexual, the resulting dream ex-
pressed the sexual idAs, not literally,
but in a symbolized form, thus proving
experimentally that the censor was at work,
and the dream consisted of the formation
of a manifest from a latent content. These
and other experiments have demonstrated
that the unconscious complexes determine
for the main part the character of our
dreams, and that this unconscious is capable
of a symbolization of our latent thoughts.
163
Chapter XI
Dreams and Nervous Diseases
THE dream is not only of theoretical
interest in elucidating certain prob-
lems of abnormal psychology and
of the unconscious in particular, but it
stands in the center of the psycho-analytic
treatment of the neuroses. It is this
psycho-analytic treatment which repre-
sents the latest and most logical advance
ever made in medicine in the treatment of
certain functional nervous disturbances.
Psycho-analysis is not suggestion. Sug-
gestion merely removes certain symptoms
temporarily, psycho-analysis permanently,
by eliminating the unconscious ideas or
complexes which caused the psychoneurotic
disturbance. The fundamental condition
and therefore a complete understanding of
164
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
the reason for a psyehoneurosis can never be
reached by suggestion.
The term psycho-analysis is appHed to
that particular form of treatment and in-
vestigation of the neuroses as first elabo-
rated by Freud, whose object is to remove
the unconscious sources of the individual's
nervous disturbance. The treatment is
generally applied to relieve that class of
nervous sufferers presenting such symptoms
as obsessions, morbid fears, and compul-
sive thoughts and acts, often out of har-
mony with the person's training and char-
acter. It is also helpful in clearing up
many personal peculiarities in those who
are not actually nervously diseased.
For instance, children quickly learn to
repress certain sensuous and anti-social
tendencies, and as adult life is reached,
there is an inclination to preserve these
inwardly but very actively, as a hidden
source of certain pleasures and abnormal
cravings. We all of us thus lead double
165
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
lives, and without definitely passing into the
realm of the pathologic, we are all more or
less double personalities, i.e. : our veneer or
false disguise of outward social conventions
and our true inward, unconscious selves,
with our repressions carried over from child-
hood, our abnormal cravings and savage
instincts, our constant fight against tempta-
tion, and our occasional yielding to it, if not
actually because of a strong moral sense, at
least inwardly in our reveries during the day
and in our dreams at night. Thus, a highly
refined and cultured man once dreamed
of killing his stepson, because the mother
actually paid more attention to him than
she did to her husband. Culture and re-
finement had repressed the wish which
was fulfilled in the dream, a proof of the
primitive instinct of jealous rage which
the dreamer had carried over from his in-
fantile thinking. It is these repressions,
this unconscious personality, which often
crops out in the dreams of the normal in-
166
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
dividual as well as those who are nervously-
sick. Well does Shakespeare, with the
intuitive insight of a great poet, make
the doctor say in Macbeth, referring to
the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth :
" Infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets."
Psycho-analysis is the only form of the in-
vestigation of the neuroses which explains
why certain symptoms occur, as in the past
physicians have been too prone to interpret
nervous symptoms, particularly the peculiar
and contradictory behavior of hysterical
patients, as a form of inexplicable stubborn-
ness. Furthermore, the analytic investi-
gation of the symptoms not only gives both
patient and physician an insight into the
nervous disease, but this investigation
also acts as the treatment itself, that is,
the repressed feelings are set free, and
with this liberation, the symptoms gradu-
ally disappear. In the individual, repres-
sion is a moral function ; in the masses or
167
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
in the race, it is a social function. When a
mental conflict arises between our individ-
ual repressed impulses and our moral,
ethical, or religious censorship, we have a
neurosis in the form of an obsession, com-
pulsive ideas, hysterical or anxiety or
psychasthenic states or fluctuations in
mood, either an abnormal exaltation or an
abnormal depression. When the mental
conflict takes place among the masses, we
have the various types of social aggression,
which tend to upset the equilibrium of
civilization and lead to various grades of
industrial revolutions or to such bloody
cataclysms as the French Revolution.
These repressed thoughts lie in the un-
conscious, and since the dream represents
the most direct road for the investigation
and understanding of the unconscious, the
dream becomes the most potent instrument
in the removal of symptoms arising from
the repressed emotions in the unconscious
mental life. No one, however healthy
168
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
minded or nervously unstrung, no one,
no matter how frank or sincere, can know
his unconscious thoughts. They only come
to the surface in symptomatic actions, such
as slips of the tongue or pen which are
motivated by unconscious feelings, or in
dreams. In the dream, fragments of the
unconscious mental life, but disguised and
symbohzed and distorted out of all pro-
portion to their natural semblance, come
to the surface in the mind of the sleeper,
and it is only by a knowledge of the science
of psycho-analysis and of its technical
methods that these fragments of the un-
conscious can be interpreted and under-
stood. The dream then gives us the key
to the unconscious thoughts which are
persistently creating the patient's symp-
toms, which make and keep him nervously
ill, and therefore dream-analysis becomes
the most important method in that form
of psychotherapy known as the psycho-
analytic treatment.
169
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
Since the unconscious possesses only one
function, — wishing or desiring, — both
dreams and neurotic symptoms thus be-
come symboHc or Uteral wish fulfillments.
Paradoxical as it may seem, something is
gained by the hysterical symptoms, as in the
case of hysterical bhndness which will be
described and analyzed later in the course
of this chapter. Of course, this feeling of
gaining something is an unconscious mental
process, of which the symptoms are merely
the fulfillment in a disguised form. Hys-
terical symptoms are wish fulfillments sym-
bolized, exactly like dreams.
Through a mental mechanism which
cannot be discussed here, because it would
involve too many technicalities, the re-
pressed, unconscious thoughts are frequently
converted into the symbolic, physical symp-
toms of the hysteric. For instance, in the
case of a woman who had double vision
due to hysteria (that is, all objects appeared
double to her), it could be shown on an-
170
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
alysis that this double vision was not an
accidental occurrence, but actually bore a
strong, causal relationship to her hysterical
mental state.
This double vision appeared almost im-
mediately after an emotional shock, when
she found that her husband had been un-
faithful to her. It immediately flashed
across her mind that her husband was lead-
ing a " double life " (her own expression), and
a more detailed analysis demonstrated that
this idea was symbohzed by seeing objects
double. In fact, after the emotional shock,
she first saw her husband double, and it was
only later that this doubling spread to other
objects. In her dreams, too, all objects
appeared double, thus proving that the
double vision was not due, as in most cases,
to an organic affection of the eye muscles,
but in this particular case had a psychical
origin and was a symbolization of the
woman's conception of her husband. In-
deed, when she first saw her husband double,
171
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
there was associated a great anxiety and
fear of losing him through his unfaithful-
ness, and therefore the double vision was
at first a reinforcement of a wish to retain
her husband's affections, and only later did
it symbolize his double life. Thus this
symptom, in its symbolization, condensa-
tion, and wish fulfillment, like every hysteri-
cal symptom, bore a striking resemblance
to the structure of a dream.
Since inversely, too, the formation and
structure of a dream bears an extraordinary
resemblance to an hysterical symptom,
dreams are very valuable for exploring
the unconscious mind of the hysterical.
An hysterical symptom is a repressed wish
attempting to find an outlet; a dream is
a repressed wish in which the outlet is taking
place in the process of dreaming. Both are
symbolized wishes, and both can be under-
stood only through psycho-analysis.
Stammering, also, is frequently a symbol
of an unconscious mental process, the
172
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
speech defect arising in an effort to conceal
a repressed thought or idea, often an idea
of an unpleasant or shameful nature which
continually tends to obtrude itself in con-
sciousness. Like a slip of the tongue,
stammering is not accidental, but is moti-
vated or caused by an unconscious mental
process of which the sufferer is not a ware. ^
The following case demonstrates how the
study of the dreams of an individual not
only gave an insight into the mechanism
of that individual's nervous disease, but
likewise furnished the material for the
successful cure of the condition. The case
in question refers to a condition of hysteri-
cal blindness in a little girl of eleven.^ In
this case it could be shown that childhood
hysteria, like adult hysteria, has the same
mechanisms, in that the hysterical symp-
* Isador H. Coriat, "Stammering as a Psychoneurosis," Journal
of Abnormal Psychology, vol. IX, no. 6, 1915.
2 For a complete report of this case, the reader is referred to my
paper on "Some Hysterical Mechanisms in Children," Journal
of Abnormal Psychology, vol. IX, nos. 2-3. 1914.
173
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
toms expressed the fulfillment, often sym-
bolic, of a repressed wish, exactly the
same process which takes place in the dreams
of normal individuals. Thus an under-
standing of the psychology of dreams fur-
nishes us with the data necessary for the
understanding of hysteria. In children,
however, the mental processes are much more
simple than those of adults, and conse-
quently their dreams and hysterical symp-
toms are far less complicated; in fact, as
previously pointed out,^ they are literal
fulfillments of undisguised wishes.
The little girl lost her eyesight within
a period of a few weeks, becoming almost
completely blind. A complete examina-
tion of the eyes and the nervous system
revealed the fact that there was no evi-
dence of any organic disease. The condi-
tion was therefore interpreted as purely
functional, a form of hysterical blindness,
particularly since the child showed other
* See chapter VTI, Dreams of Children.
174
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
evidences of hysteria, such as a nervous
cough, hysterical convulsions, and an in-
ability to feel touch and pain over one
entire side of the body.
In order to understand the mechanism
of this hysterical blindness, it was deter-
mined to undertake a study of the little
girl's dreams as offering the readiest means
of access to her unconscious mental con-
flicts and wishes. In this I was fortunate
in securing the intelligent co-operation of
the little patient's mother. The following
dreams were recorded. The dream in-
stigator as ascertained follows each dream
in parenthesis.
Dream I. She was chasing her pet
squirrel around the house, and it also ap-
peared as if the squirrel chased her. (She
has a pet squirrel.)
Dream II. The house took fire, and all
the family were saved except her baby
brother (eighteen months old), who was
burned up. (The chimney had recently
175
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
been cleaned out, because the family feared
it would catch fire.)
Dream III. She was coming from a
moving-picture show with her mother and
her younger brother S. (age nine), and her
elder sister O. (age thirteen) . Then she saw
a man in a near-by store, and because she
felt he had no right there, as the store was
closed, she called up the proprietress of
the store, telling her that she would guard
it. She remained near the store and sent
her mother and the other two children
home. (She had recently been to a mov-
ing-picture performance.)
Dream IV. She and her brother (S.,
age nine) were coming down the street,
and through a crack in the board-walk she
saw a penny, and she stooped to pick it
up. Then she saw pennies all around, and
she filled her pockets full. Then a man
came and shot her brother S. and killed
him, and she felt badly. Then the man
also shot at her, but merely frightened her.
176
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
Dream V. Her baby brother G. was
missing. He had run away and gone up
to church, and she started to run after him,
and then he turned and ran into a snow-
drift and disappeared.
Dream VI. She and her three-year-
old brother (R.) and a httle girl playmate,
B., were sliding down hill with their sleds.
Finally R. ran into a snowdrift and dis-
appeared, and B. and she ran on and left
him there. (The instigator of these last
two dreams was frequent coasting with
her sled.)
Dream VII. She was visiting B. with
her father and was riding through the sub-
way.
Dream VIII. She was in school, happy,
studying her lessons, and with all her
schoolmates.
In analyzing this series of dreams, their
simple character, undistorted by symboli-
zation, stands out prominently. Then, too,
nearly every dream could be found to be
177
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
instigated either by some happening during
the day or by some mental conflict of the
nature of an unfulfilled wish, the wish, how-
ever, becoming completely fulfilled in the
dream. It was found also that all the
dreams represented unfulfilled conscious
and unconscious wishes which were re-
pressed during the day.
The instigators of some of these dreams,
so far as could be demonstrated, have al-
ready been given in parenthesis at the
end of each dream. Although the dream
instigators were harmless enough, yet the
content of each dream represented the ful-
filling of important repressed childhood
wishes, relating principally to family con-
flicts and jealousies, particularly toward
her younger brothers and sisters. This is
not at all surprising when we remember
that the feelings of most children for
their younger brothers and sisters is far
from being altogether one of affection. In
fact, there is a feehng of rivalry and jealousy
178
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
toward the younger ones of the family,
particularly if these younger members in
any way hinder or interfere with the child's
play activities.
Thus the child is an egoist; it has little
or no altruistic or family feelings. It sees
in its elders an oppressor and interprets
the younger members of the family as
rivals for the parental love which it feels
should be showered on it alone. This
rivalry is not only seen in the love of the
son for the mother and of the daughter
for the father, but likewise in the relation-
ship between brothers and sisters, partic-
ularly if they happen to be younger. The
child not only wishes its younger rivals
dead (or out of sight, which is synonymous
for the child), but if this rival in any way
interferes with its activities, the wish for
its death or disappearance is actually ful-
filled in the dream. Sometimes the wish
in very young children is clearly indicated
in their speech; in other older children
179
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
the wish is suppressed. For instance, a
Httle boy of my acquaintance, when asked
if he loved a new arrival in the shape of a
little brother, replied that he would "throw
him down the elevator well", and later
showed his disgust with him by saying:
"He can't talk or anything." Freud's
case of Hans, too, showed his coolness
toward a new arrival by stating that "He
had no teeth." Facts such as these, in
the form of conscious jealousy associated
with an unconscious wish to put the younger
member of the family aside, could be elicited
in our case.
For some period the little patient had
shown a jealousy of her younger brothers
and sisters, and at times, particularly at
Christmas, she accused her father and
mother of "speaking more about their
presents" (referring to the younger chil-
dren) "than of mine." She is apt to feel
badly also, unless her mother takes her to
entertainments to the exclusion of the other
180
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
children. Toward her baby brother, who
was eighteen months old at the time the
hysterical blindness began, she has shown
a certain amount of ambivalence,^ in that
during her waking moments she reiterated
her love for him, whereas she systemati-
cally wished him out of the way in her
dreams.
The child's first difficulty with the eye-
sight occurred while she was at school.
Her mother had been away for several
weeks, and during her mother's absence
the maid suddenly left the house. Thus
there devolved upon her the partial care
of the house and also of the younger chil-
dren. She resented this added labor, as it
interfered with her play activities, and this
feeling was accentuated by the added
jealousy towards her younger brothers,
which she had displayed in times past.
1 A term applied in psycho-analysis which gives the same idea
two contrary feelings, such as hating and loving or repulsion and
attraction, or which invests the same thought simultaneously
with both a positive and negative character.
181
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
Her nine-year-old brother S. plays with
another boy about his own age, and this
also made her jealous, as she wished to
play with the boy alone. The play activi-
ties of children frequently have an associ-
ated erotic component, such as in swinging
and in muscular activity. Out of this
mental attitude of jealousy and of what
she considered an interference with her
play activities, she developed the idea (a
wish) that if she were ill, the added family
labor would be taken away from her, and
thus she would be free to play again. Thus
the purposeful mental action arose, some-
thing would be gained by a conversion of
this wish into blindness, so as not to see
her surroundings and the children. How-
ever, the blindness was not a selected one,
directed to the younger children alone,
but also comprised her school and play
activities in such a manner that she could
not see to read the fairy stories of which
she was fond, the blackboard at school,
182
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
or her normal outdoor sports. That is,
her converted wish defeated her own ends,
the bHndness became general, and she
was, so to speak, ''hoisted with her own
petard."
After the mechanism of her blindness
as a converted wish became understood
through the dream analysis, it was this
mechanism which furnished the hints for
the psychotherapy and, therefore, cure of
the condition. The child was taken out
of school and not allowed to play or read,
and meanwhile a promise was held out to
her that she would again be allowed to
play, read, and return to school as soon as
her eyesight was better. The dreams fur-
nished strong evidence of this persistent
wish to resume her school and play activi-
ties, and it was on the basis of the dreams
that the psychotherapy was carried out.
By the use of this simple and logical method,
when the child, who was quite intelligent,
saw that nothing further was to be gained
183
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
by her blindness, since it defeated its own
ends by being total and not selective, the
vision gradually became normal. The
symptom of blindness by this simple
psychotherapeutic method not only dis-
appeared, but the converted wish that was
lying at the bottom of her hysteria like-
wise vanished.
Thus this little girl's hysteria resulted
from a struggle between her conscious
feelings and her unconscious wishes, with
the result that the latter gained the upper
hand, leading to the hysterical blindness.
Like many hysterical patients, paradoxical
as it may seem, she gained something by
being nervously ill, in this case the gain
being a rehef from household drudgery
which would follow if she could not see
what to do. Every dream, like every
hysterical symptom, is a gain, a wish ful-
filled.
For instance, an important and distress-
ing symptom of many functional nervous
184
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
disturbances is the feeling of unreality,
in which the surroundings appear far off,
like looking through the wrong end of an
opera glass, vague, and dream-like, in which
it seems as if the individual were partially
or completely cut off from the physical uni-
verse. These unreality feelings frequently
arise because the subject finds that reality
is too painful to bear, because he feels that
he cannot struggle successfully with the
perplexities of life. Consequently the sub-
ject comes to live in an ideal, dream world
of his own making and building, where
everything is set to right, and where there
are no difficulties and struggles. This ideal
world is really the land of his heart's desire,
and so calm is it, so safe does he feel, that
he finally chooses the world of his own
ideas rather than the world of physical
reality. Thus the unreality gains the upper
hand and finally dominates the personality.
The neurotic thus comes to live within
himself or rather within the unreality of his
185
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
neurosis. The inherent factor, the real
mechanism at the bottom of every neurosis,
is a mental conflict. It follows from this that
although there may be a congenital disposi-
tion to nervousness, no one of us is born with
a nervous disease, but we acquire it as a
result of a maladaptation to surroundings,
of not adequately meeting the issues of
life, or from our repressed emotions and
mental conflicts. In many nervous dis-
turbances, there is a withdrawal from the
world of reality and from the issues and
conflicts of life, which are all evaded by
first consciously living in a world of pain-
less unreality from which these issues are
absent and which finally gains the upper
hand.
Psycho-analysis as carried out through a
study of the dreams is of value not only in
the nervously sick, but in the normal in-
dividual as well. It enables us to know our
own weaknesses and prejudices, the causes
of our successes or failures, our repressions,
186
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
vague fears, and superstitions, and to point
out the path for the remedying of these
mental and moral and ethical defects.
Freud states concerning this point:
"Whoever has had the opportunity of
studying the concealed psychic feelings of
persons by means of psycho-analysis can
also tell something new concerning the
quality of unconscious motives which ex-
press themselves in superstition. Nervous
persons afflicted with compulsive thinking
and compulsive states, who are often very
intelligent, show very plainly that supersti-
tion originates from repressed hostile and
cruel impulses. The greater part of super-
stition signifies fear of impending evil, and
he who has frequently wished evil to others,
but because of a good bringing up has re-
pressed the same into the unconscious, will
be particularly apt to expect punishment for
such unconscious evil in the form of a mis-
fortune threatening him from without." ^
1 "Psychopathology of Everyday Life." p. 311.
187
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
As an example, a neurotic man, whom I
had the occasion to psycho-analyze, one
day, in the course of treatment, brought me
the two following dreams :
Dream 1. He seemed to be running an
elevator, and with him was a man whose
foot became caught between the elevator
and the well, as the former was ascending,
but nevertheless he kept on running the
elevator.
Dream 2. He seemed to be talking
with a man and then started to mount the
seat of a wagon, and as he did so, the man
reached the seat before him, as if to steal
the horse and wagon. Thereupon, in a
manner which was not altogether clear in
the dream, he toppled the wagon over, and
it then seemed as if the wagon were full of
iron bars. These fell upon the man and
pinioned him down, and he stood on top of
the pile and called for the police.
Apparently these two dreams were mean-
ingless, except that they showed a wish on
188
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
the part of the subject to bring injury and
disaster to each man. It developed that
he dishked the man in the first dream for
his arrogance, while the man in the second
dream he had known ever since both were
little boys. This latter person once threw
a stone and struck the subject on the back
of the head, and since then he had
often thought that this head injury may
have been responsible for his nervous dis-
turbance. Hence the scheme of revenge
in both cases and the repressed wish that
evil might befall each, although this wish
was only fulfilled in the dream and never
in reality. In the course of the analysis,
it developed that the subject was very
superstitious. He would not cross a funeral
procession but would wait for the procession
to pass, because he felt if he did so that he
would develop some mental trouble. Walk-
ing under a ladder always signified to him
that bad luck would follow. Sometimes,
in order to prove to himself that he was not
189
THE MEANING OF DREAMS
superstitious (a kind of a defence reaction),
he would purposely, for instance, sit at a
table making thirteen or laugh at people
who wouldn't do so, yet all the time feeling
that evil or death would overtake him.
Thus his superstitious fear of impending
evil arose because he wished disaster would
happen to others, not consciously so, but
repressed into the unconscious and only
appearing in his dreams. The fear of evil
happening to him was therefore a reversal
of his repressed wish that evil might hap-
pen to others.
The end of all psycho-analysis is two-
fold : first, to educate the patient to become
an independent personality by directly
freeing him from his neurosis and therefore
from his infantile limitations, so that when
the dependence of the physician is cut off,
the patient can be put on his own feet, so
to speak ; and secondly, to relieve the re-
pressed emotions so that they may be in-
dulged in freely and unhampered, partly
190
DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISEASES
by conscious control and partly by con-
ducting those emotions to a higher and less
objectionable goal. This last process is
termed sublimation, and if properly carried
out in the hands of a skilled psycho-analyst,
the repressed instincts become unchained
and thereby can no longer produce a neu-
rosis, and the conflict between repression
and the attempt on the part of the individ-
ual to find an outlet for the repression,
which is the process that causes the nervous
malady, disappears.
It is the dream which guides us into the
patient's unconscious, repressed emotions;
it is through the dream, too, that the final
sublimation, the freeing from the neurosis,
is reached.
THE END
191
INDEX
Ambivalence, 181.
Anxiety Dreams, 87-92,
150-151.
Artificial Dreams, 153-162.
Autistic Thinking, 155-157.
Bleuler, E., 156-157.
BriU, A. A., 23.
Carroll, Lewis, 36.
Censor, 33-34, 81-95.
Condensation of Dreams,
30, 69-72.
Content of Dreams, 67-
69.
Content, latent, 30, 68.
Content, manifest, 30, 68.
Coriat, I. H., 23, 62, 92,
101, 107, 118, 128, 173.
Dream Motives, 38-39.
Dream, Protective Fmic-
tion of, 96-97, 103-105.
Dream Work, 39, 73.
Dreams and Character, 5-d.
Dreams and Hysteria, 103-
104, 172.
Dreams, History of, 8-11.
Dreams of Children, 106-
115.
Dreams of Death, 124-
128.
Dreams of Indians, 116-
120.
Dreams within Dreams, 74-
79.
Elaboration of Dreams,
73-74.
Electra-Complex, 114.
Determinism in Mental Experimental Dreams, 162-
Processes, 19-23, 153- 163.
155.
DeVries, H., 11.
Displacement in Dreams,
30, 72-73.
Dramatization of Dreams,
73.
Dream Analysis, Example
of, 13-42.
Flying Dreams, 133-135.
Freud, S., 2, 6, 9, 23-24,
42, 44, 111, 141-142,
144-145, 187.
Furlong, Charles W., 116.
Grubb, W. B., 117.
193
INDEX
Hysteria, 170-172.
Hysteria in Children, 173-
184.
Insomnia, Psycho-ana-
lytic Treatment of,
101-103.
Instigators of Dreams, 29.
Mechanism of Dreams,
66-67.
Mendel, G., 11.
Mental Conflicts, 168.
Myths and Dreams, 135-
138.
Nakedness Dreams, 122-
124, 130-132.
New England Conscience,
64-65.
(Edipus-Complex, 113,
127-130.
Over-determination, 41.
Prophetic Dreams, 141-
152.
Psycho-analysis, 164-169.
Psycho-analysis of Normal
Individuals, 186-190.
Psycho-analysis, Object of,
191.
Reinforcement m
Dreams, 74.
Repression, 81-94, 165-167.
Resistance, 58, 86.
Sexual Dreams, 79-80.
Sleep, 101.
Stammering, 172-173.
Stevenson, R. L., 109-
110.
Sublimation, 191.
Superstition, 187.
Symbolic Thinking, 139-
140.
Symbolism of Dreams, 79-
81.
Taylor, H. O., 140.
Typical Dreams, 121-135.
Unconscious, 4, 57.
Unconscious, Barbaric Na-
turelof, 62.
Unconscious in Dreams,
58-59.
Unreality, Feeling of, 184-
186.
Wish Conflicts, 49.
Wish, Definition of, 48.
Wishes in Dreams, 44-56.
Wit, 6.
194
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